Systems and methods for adaptively selecting among different error correction coding schemes in a flash drive

ABSTRACT

Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relatively inexpensive MLC Flash for an enterprise storage application.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION Appendix A

Appendix A, which forms a part of this disclosure, is a list of commonlyowned copending U.S. patent applications. Each one of the applicationslisted in Appendix A is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety byreference thereto.

BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Invention

Embodiments of the invention generally relate to electronics, and inparticular, to flash drive memory controllers, such as to solid-statedrive memory controllers.

2. Description of the Related Art

Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory. A memory cell in flashmemory can be a single-level cell (SLC), which encodes one bit ofinformation per cell, or a multi-level cell (MLC), which encodes two ormore bits of information per memory cell. Typically, a flash memoryimplementation using MLC is much cheaper than a flash memoryimplementation with SLC. Further, a flash memory device is arranged intopages and blocks. Data can be written to and read from flash memory inpages. A group of pages known as a block corresponds to the smallesterasable unit of flash memory.

Over time, programming and erasing flash memory causes a variety ofdefects that degrade the performance of the flash memory cell. Inparticular, MLC memory cells have much lower program/erase cyclelifetimes than SLC memory cells, which can be a problem in an enterpriseapplication. This degradation, along with other noise effects, cause thesignal-to-noise ratio of the memory cell to change over time. After thesignal-to-noise ratio has fallen to a certain level, the flash memorydevice is typically no longer reliable. Manufacturers typically specifya number of program/erase cycles over which the properties of theirflash devices are guaranteed.

As flash memory technologies become denser with decreasing processtechnology, the amount of charge stored on a floating gate of a memorycell tends to fall, crosstalk between cells tends to rise, insulationmaterial between memory cells become thinner, and so on. Taken together,these effects tend to cause the signal-to-noise ratio of flash memory todecrease with each passing generation.

Flash memory devices require the use of a form of Error CorrectionCoding (ECC) to detect and correct the errors that inevitably occur.ECC, and in particular the ubiquitous Reed-Solomon or the Bose,Chaudhuri, and Hocquenghem (BCH) hard-decision codes, are widely used inelectronics as a way of mitigating low signal-to-noise ratio incommunications and storage media. With ECC, redundant information isstored or transmitted alongside the regular information bearing data, topermit an ECC decoder to deduce the originally transmitted or storedinformation even in the presence of errors.

A conventional approach to error management for MLC flash memories hasbeen for the flash memory chip manufacturer to specify a particularstrength of ECC code, typically a one-dimensional BCH code, capable ofcorrecting a certain number of bits per certain size of sector, forexample 24 bits per 1024 bytes. Examples of allocations of flash bytesin a typical flash page using vendor-specified BCH are shown in FIGS. 1Aand 1B. FIG. 1A illustrates a standard layout for a page of flashmemory. A region is provided for user data 101 or information data inthe main area of the flash page, and a spare area 102 is provided toprovide room for ECC parity and other data. In practice, the user data103, metadata 104, such as data integrity feature (DIF) and JournalingEngine management data, and the manufacturer's recommended amount of ECCparity data 105 may be stored interleaved within the page as illustratedin FIG. 1B.

So long as the specified error correction is provided by the flashcontroller, the flash memory chip manufacturer guarantees a certainnumber of Program/Erase (P/E) cycles over which the flash memory chipswill store and retain data, with no more errors than the ECC cancorrect, with a probability of uncorrectable errors occurring less thansome acceptable risk for the end user. For example, consumer gradeflash-based drives may tolerate a relatively high uncorrectable errorrate. However, in an enterprise storage environment, a relatively lowuncorrectable error rate is applicable, for example, 1×10⁻¹⁶ (1E-16).

However, conventional approaches of applying ECC to flash memory can beinefficient at achieving relatively low uncorrectable error rates overthe total service life and traffic loads that can be required in anenterprise storage environment, such as in a server.

SUMMARY

Disclosed techniques provide relatively low uncorrectable bit errorrates for flash memory, low write amplification, long life, fast andefficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that asolid-state drive (SSD) or flash drive can be implemented usingrelatively inexpensive MLC flash for an enterprise storage application.

In one embodiment, a three-dimensional turbo code, built out of threepartially orthogonal ECC components is as follows. In a first dimension,a set of “primary” error correction codes, such as BCH codes, provideserror correction for a flash page. In a second dimension, a set of“secondary” error correction codes, which are at least partly orthogonalto the primary codes, provides error correction for a “page stripe,”which can be a group of pages that are associated by secondary errorcorrection codes. A page stripe corresponds to a set of Ws flash pages(a page stripe of width Ws), wherein each page stripe includes one pageon each of the Ws flash pages. Preferably, each flash page of a pagestripe is from a different semiconductor die or different flash memoryarray. A value for the width Ws can vary in a very broad range. In oneembodiment, the width Ws is 4, however, other applicable widths will bereadily determined by one of ordinary skill in the art. For example, thevalue can be 2, 3, 5-8, or the like. In one embodiment, the Ws flashdice are arranged so that they can be efficiently accessed in parallel.

In a third dimension, a set of tertiary Reed-Solomon (RS) codes havingcodewords orthogonal to the codewords of both the primary code andsecondary code, provides error correction for a “page grid,” which canbe a group of pages that are associated by tertiary error correctioncodes. A page grid corresponds to a set of Wg page stripes (a page gridof width Wg), wherein each page grid includes Wg page stripes with eachpage of the page grid preferably on different sets of flash dice orflash memory arrays, for a total of one flash page from each of theproduct of width Ws and width Wg flash dice. In one embodiment, thewidth Wg is 4, however, other applicable widths will be readilydetermined by one of ordinary skill in the art. For example, for thecase in which each of the width Ws and the width Wg are 4, then therewould be 16 flash pages in the page grid. The primary, secondary, andtertiary codes can be considered to be an outer code, a first innercode, and a second inner code, respectively.

In one embodiment, a journaling filing system or flash translation layeris used to reduce write amplification, thereby extending flash memorycell life. As or after the journaling file system receives data(information) for storage in flash memory cells, that data is used tocalculate primary parity, secondary parity, and tertiary parity. Forefficiency, the calculation of the parity bits is preferably performedin parallel with the writing of the data to the flash memory cells.

Data may be received by the journaling file system in a relatively largedata stream. When stored, this data stream is allocated among aplurality of payloads of codewords. In the illustrated embodiment, anECC encoder/decoder generates the parity bits for the primary parity,the secondary parity, and the tertiary parity. As discussed earlier, theterms primary, secondary, and tertiary refer to orthogonal dimensionsover which block data is taken for calculation of ECC parity bits. Inits simplest form, the block data can correspond to user data, that is,information, but as explained below, with other parity bits, can includeparity bits of earlier calculated ECC.

In one embodiment, primary parity information is inserted into thestored data stream at the end of each primary codeword such that aprimary codeword typically has, but does not need to have, contiguoussymbols. In the illustrated embodiment, secondary parity is calculatedover and inserted at the end of each page stripe (but before thetertiary parity). Generally, the secondary parity symbols are notcontiguous with the secondary information symbols. A second primaryparity that is calculated on the secondary parity bits is inserted atthe end of the secondary parity. Tertiary parity is calculated over apage grid (groups of Wg page stripes), and is inserted into a reservedtertiary space at the end of the last page stripe. In this context,“last” means the last in time page stripe of the page grid to storedata. The last page stripe can also be termed the tertiary page stripe.Generally, the tertiary parity symbols are not contiguous with thetertiary information symbols. Primary parity is calculated on thetertiary parity bits (PoTP) and inserted after the tertiary parity bits.

The result is that the flash memory is programmed as a set of pagegrids, with each piece of user data being protected by athree-dimensional grid of error correction codes. Each error correctioncode requires the addition of redundant data, which reduces the amountof user data that can be stored in the grid. The stronger the correctioncode, the more redundant data is required. The strength of the errorcorrecting code can be selected on a per-page stripe basis. Preferably,the selected strength for the code can be the weakest one that is stillcertain to be able to correct the bit error rate anticipated on thatpage stripe.

When reading data, the data of interest is usually less than a pagestripe. In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, the data ofinterest is read from the flash memory along with enough surroundingdata to make up a set of complete primary codewords (a partial pageread). If the primary decode process alone is sufficient to correct thedata with high confidence, the operation is complete. If not, the entirepage stripe containing the data of interest will be read and processed.

When decoding a page stripe, the primary and secondary codes can be usedin an iterative fashion as necessary. If this is sufficient to correctthe data with high confidence, the ECC decoding operation is completeand the data is released to the file system. If not, then the remainingthree page stripes of the page grid are read.

When decoding a page grid, the primary and secondary parity of the Wg,for example, 4, page stripes are used to correct those page stripes tothe extent practical, according to the principles of turbo decoding,which can include iterative decoding. After this is complete, thetertiary codewords over the page grid will be decoded iteratively withthe primary and secondary, according to the principles ofthree-dimensional turbo decoding. If this is sufficient to correct thedata with high confidence, the decoding operation is complete and thedata is released to the file system. If not, then a final procedure canbe attempted, which allows the algorithm to recover from the massivefailure of one page in the grid. If that fails, then ECC decoding hasfailed, and a read response is sent indicating that the user data wasuncorrectable.

One embodiment includes a method of selecting an error correction coding(ECC) scheme, wherein the method includes: determining a bit error rateassociated with a region associated with a plurality of flash memorypages or integer fractions thereof; comparing the determined bit errorrate to one or more predetermined thresholds corresponding to a set ofpredefined gears comprising at least a first gear and a second gear,wherein the predefined gears correspond to different predefined ECCschemes, wherein the first gear has a different data payload size andcorrection capability than the second gear; and selecting a gear fromthe set for the region based at least partly on the comparisons to theone or more predetermined thresholds; wherein determining, comparing,and selecting are performed by an integrated circuit. Determining,comparing, and selecting can be performed concurrently with at least oneof flash initialization, read, or write operations for an end user.However, these determining, comparing, and selecting activities do notneed to be done each time there is an initialization, read, or writeoperation.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to determine a bit error rate associated with aregion associated with a plurality of flash memory pages or integerfractions thereof and to compare the determined bit error rate to one ormore predetermined thresholds corresponding to a set of predefined gearscomprising at least a first gear and a second gear, wherein thepredefined gears correspond to different error correction coding (ECC)schemes, wherein the first gear has a different data payload size andcorrection capability than the second gear; and a second circuitconfigured to select a gear from the set for the region based at leastpartly on the comparisons to the one or more predetermined thresholds.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for selecting an error correctioncoding (ECC) scheme, wherein the apparatus includes: a means fordetermining a bit error rate associated with a region associated with aplurality of flash memory pages or integer fractions thereof; a meansfor comparing the determined bit error rate to one or more predeterminedthresholds corresponding to a set of predefined gears comprising atleast a first gear and a second gear, wherein the predefined gearscorrespond to different predefined ECC schemes, wherein the first gearhas a different data payload size and correction capability than thesecond gear; and a means for selecting a gear from the set for theregion based at least partly on the comparisons to the one or morepredetermined thresholds.

One embodiment includes an method of selecting among gears, whereindifferent gears correspond to different error correction coding (ECC)schemes for regions of a flash drive, wherein the method includes:performing a memory test to determine raw bit error rates among theregions of the flash drive; retiring regions having a raw bit error rate(RBER) above a selected threshold; and for remaining regions, allocatingone or more regions to one of at least a first gear or a second gearbased at least partly on the RBER for the region, wherein the first gearand the second gear vary by data payload size and correction capability;wherein the memory test, retiring regions, and allocating are performedby an integrated circuit; wherein the memory test, retiring regions, andallocating are performed concurrently with initialization operations foran end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to run a memory test to determine raw bit errorrates among regions of a flash drive; and a second circuit configuredto: retire regions having a raw bit error rate (RBER) above a selectedthreshold; and allocate one or more remaining regions to one of at leasta first gear or a second gear based at least partly on the RBER for theregion, wherein the first gear and the second gear vary by data payloadsize and correction capability, wherein different gears correspond todifferent error correction coding (ECC) schemes for regions of the flashdrive; wherein the first circuit is configured to run the memory testconcurrently with initialization operations for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for selecting among gears, whereindifferent gears correspond to different error correction coding (ECC)schemes for regions of a flash drive, wherein the apparatus includes: ameans for performing a memory test to determine raw bit error ratesamong the regions of the flash drive, wherein the memory test performingmeans is configured to run the memory test concurrently withinitialization operations for an end user; a means for retiring regionshaving a raw bit error rate (RBER) above a selected threshold; and ameans for allocating one or more remaining regions to one of at least afirst gear or a second gear based at least partly on the RBER for theregion, wherein the first gear and the second gear vary by data payloadsize and correction capability.

One embodiment includes a method of managing one or more gears, whereindifferent gears correspond to different error correction code (ECC)schemes, wherein the method includes: receiving a request for user datastored in flash memory devices, wherein the user data can be in storedin a scrambled from or in an unscrambled form; retrieving one or morecodewords containing the requested user data from a region of the flashmemory devices, wherein the region is associated with a first gear;correcting the one or more codewords to detect and correct errors withthe first gear; and deciding whether or not to select a different gearfor the region or retiring the region based on at least one of ananalysis of an approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) of the region or anumber of decoding iterations used to correct the requested user data,wherein the different gear has greater error correction capacity thanthe first gear; wherein at least correcting and deciding are performedby an integrated circuit.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to: receive a request for user data stored inflash memory devices, wherein the user data can be in stored in ascrambled from or in an unscrambled form; and retrieve one or morecodewords containing the requested user data from a region of the flashmemory devices, wherein the region is associated with a first gear,wherein different gears correspond to different error correction code(ECC) schemes; and a second circuit configured to correct the one ormore codewords to detect and correct errors with the first gear; whereinthe first circuit is configured to decide whether or not to select adifferent gear for the region or retire the region based on at least oneof an analysis of an approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) of the regionor a number of decoding iterations used to correct the requested userdata, wherein the different gear has greater error correction capacitythan the first gear.

One embodiment includes an apparatus of managing one or more gears,wherein different gears correspond to different error correction code(ECC) schemes, wherein the apparatus includes: a means for receiving arequest for user data stored in flash memory devices, wherein the userdata can be in stored in a scrambled from or in an unscrambled form; ameans for retrieving one or more codewords containing the requested userdata from a region of the flash memory devices, wherein the region isassociated with a first gear; a means for correcting the one or morecodewords to detect and correct errors with the first gear; and a meansfor deciding whether or not to select a different gear for the region orretiring the region based on at least one of an analysis of anapproximate raw bit error rate (RBER) of the region or a number ofdecoding iterations used to correct the requested user data, wherein thedifferent gear has greater error correction capacity than the firstgear.

One embodiment includes a method of programming data to a plurality offlash memory devices, wherein the method includes: receiving data to beprogrammed; arranging the received data for distribution among a groupof pages such that sequentially received data is to be programmed amongthe group of pages, wherein the group of pages comprises two or moreflash memory pages or two or more integer fractions of flash memorypages; error correction encoding data to be stored within a particularpage or integer fraction to generate primary parity symbols for primarycodewords; generating information portions of secondary codewords byselecting portions of primary codewords, wherein secondary codewords areat least partially orthogonal to primary codewords; error correctionencoding the information portions of the secondary codewords to generatesecondary parity symbols for the secondary codewords; arranging thesecondary parity data for distribution among the group of pages suchthat the secondary parity data is to be programmed among the group ofpages; and programming the group of pages with the arranged receiveddata, the primary parity data, and the arranged secondary parity data;wherein at least error correction encoding data, generating informationportions, and error correction encoding the information portions areperformed by an integrated circuit; wherein at least error correctionencoding data, generating information portions, and error correctionencoding the information portions are performed concurrently with writeoperations for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the method includes: afirst circuit configured to: receive data to be programmed; and arrangethe received data for distribution among a group of pages such thatsequentially received data is to be programmed among the group of pages,wherein the group of pages comprises two or more flash memory pages ortwo or more integer fractions of flash memory pages; a second circuitconfigured to error correction encode data to be stored within aparticular page or integer fraction to generate primary parity symbolsfor primary codewords; the first circuit further configured to selectportions of primary codewords to generate information portions ofsecondary codewords, wherein secondary codewords are at least partiallyorthogonal to primary codewords; the second circuit further configuredto error correction encode the information portions of the secondarycodewords to generate secondary parity symbols for the secondarycodewords; the first circuit further configured to arrange the secondaryparity data for distribution among the group of pages such that thesecondary parity data is to be programmed among the group of pages; andthe first circuit further configured to program the group of pages withthe arranged received data, the primary parity data, and the arrangedsecondary parity data; wherein the first circuit and the second circuitare configured to error correction encode data, to generate informationportions, and to error correction encode the information portionsconcurrently with write operations for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for programming data to a pluralityof flash memory devices, wherein the apparatus includes: a means forreceiving data to be programmed; a means for arranging the received datafor distribution among a group of pages such that sequentially receiveddata is to be programmed among the group of pages, wherein the group ofpages comprises two or more flash memory pages or two or more integerfractions of flash memory pages; a means for error correction encodingdata to be stored within a particular page or integer fraction togenerate primary parity symbols for primary codewords; a means forgenerating information portions of secondary codewords by selectingportions of primary codewords, wherein secondary codewords are at leastpartially orthogonal to primary codewords; the encoding means furtherconfigured to error correction encode the information portions of thesecondary codewords to generate secondary parity symbols for thesecondary codewords; the arranging means further configured to arrangethe secondary parity data for distribution among the group of pages suchthat the secondary parity data is to be programmed among the group ofpages; and a means for programming the group of pages with the arrangedreceived data, the primary parity data, and the arranged secondaryparity data; wherein the arranging means and the error correction meansare configured to operate concurrently with write operations for an enduser.

One embodiment includes a method of decoding data with low latency,wherein the method includes: receiving a request for data stored in atleast one of a plurality of flash memory devices; identifying a pagestripe that includes the requested data, wherein the page stripecomprises a grouping of one or more equally-sized flash pages or integerfractions of flash pages, wherein each page or each integer fraction ofthe page stripe contains primary parity symbols for error correction ofdata stored within the page or integer fraction, and wherein the pagesor integer fractions of the page stripe contain secondary parity symbolsfor error correction of data stored throughout the page stripe;determining a portion of the page stripe that contains an integer numberof a first set of primary codewords containing the requested data andassociated primary parity symbols such that retrieval and decoding ofthe requested data is performed with a first amount of latency;retrieving from flash memory the first set of primary codewordscontaining the requested data; performing error correction on the firstset of primary codewords to determine if the raw requested data containserrors and if the errors, if any, are correctable, to generate firstcorrected requested data; releasing the first corrected requested databased at least partly on a determination that the first correctedrequested data has been decoded with a likelihood of error below apredetermined acceptable uncorrectable bit error rate (aUBER) when thefirst corrected requested data cannot be considered to be error free towithin the aUBER, performing the following: reading the page stripecontaining the requested data such that a second set of primarycodewords is retrieved, wherein reading of page stripe is performed witha second latency longer than the first latency; performing errorcorrection on the second set of primary codewords of the page stripe togenerate an updated page stripe; interleaving data from the updated pagestripe to arrange secondary codewords; performing error correction onthe secondary codewords to generate corrected secondary codewords,wherein execution of error correction on the secondary codewords is notperformed in parallel with execution of error correction on the primarycodewords; de-interleaving the corrected secondary codewords to generatea further updated page stripe having an updated second set of primarycodewords; performing error correction on at least a portion of theupdated second set of primary codewords to generate updated correctedrequested data; and releasing the second corrected requested data basedat least partly on a determination that the likelihood of the requesteddata containing an error is less than a predetermined acceptable failurerate; wherein at least performing error correction is performed by anintegrated circuit; wherein at least performing error correction isperformed concurrently with a read operation for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to receive a request for data stored in atleast one of a plurality of flash memory devices; the first circuitconfigured to identify a page stripe that includes the requested data,wherein the page stripe comprises a grouping of one or moreequally-sized flash pages or integer fractions of flash pages, whereineach page or each integer fraction of the page stripe contains primaryparity symbols for error correction of data stored within the page orinteger fraction, and wherein the pages or integer fractions of the pagestripe contain secondary parity symbols for error correction of datastored throughout the page stripe; the first circuit configured todetermine a portion of the page stripe that contains an integer numberof a first set of primary codewords containing the requested data andassociated primary parity symbols such that retrieval and decoding ofthe requested data is performed with a first amount of latency; thefirst circuit configured to retrieve from flash memory the first set ofprimary codewords containing the requested data; a second circuitconfigured to perform error correction on the first set of primarycodewords to determine if the raw requested data contains errors and ifthe errors, if any, are correctable, to generate first correctedrequested data; the first circuit configured to release the firstcorrected requested data based at least partly on a determination thatthe first corrected requested data has been decoded with a likelihood oferror below a predetermined acceptable uncorrectable bit error rate(aUBER), and when the first corrected requested data cannot beconsidered to be error free to within the aUBER: the first circuit isconfigured to read the page stripe containing the requested data suchthat a second set of primary codewords is retrieved, wherein reading ofpage stripe is performed with a second latency longer than the firstlatency; the second circuit is configured to perform error correction onthe second set of primary codewords of the page stripe to generate anupdated page stripe; the first circuit is configured to interleave datafrom the updated page stripe to arrange secondary codewords; the secondcircuit is configured to perform error correction on the secondarycodewords to generate corrected secondary codewords, wherein executionof error correction on the secondary codewords is not performed inparallel with execution of error correction on the primary codewords;the first circuit is configured to de-interleave the corrected secondarycodewords to generate a further updated page stripe having an updatedsecond set of primary codewords; the second circuit is configured toperform error correction on at least a portion of the updated second setof primary codewords to generate updated corrected requested data; andthe first circuit is configured to release the second correctedrequested data based at least partly on a determination that thelikelihood of the requested data containing an error is less than apredetermined acceptable failure rate; wherein the second circuit isconfigured to perform error correction concurrently with a readoperation for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for decoding data with low latency,wherein the apparatus includes: a means for receiving a request for datastored in at least one of a plurality of flash memory devices; a meansfor identifying a page stripe that includes the requested data, whereinthe page stripe comprises a grouping of one or more equally-sized flashpages or integer fractions of flash pages, wherein each page or eachinteger fraction of the page stripe contains primary parity symbols forerror correction of data stored within the page or integer fraction, andwherein the pages or integer fractions of the page stripe containsecondary parity symbols for error correction of data stored throughoutthe page stripe; a means for determining a portion of the page stripethat contains an integer number of a first set of primary codewordscontaining the requested data and associated primary parity symbols suchthat retrieval and decoding of the requested data is performed with afirst amount of latency; a means for retrieving from flash memory thefirst set of primary codewords containing the requested data; a meansfor performing error correction on the first set of primary codewords todetermine if the raw requested data contains errors and if the errors,if any, are correctable, to generate first corrected requested data; ameans for interleaving; a means for de-interleaving; a means forreleasing the first corrected requested data based at least partly on adetermination that the first corrected requested data has been decodedwith a likelihood of error below a predetermined acceptableuncorrectable bit error rate (aUBER) when the first corrected requesteddata cannot be considered to be error free to within the aUBER: theretrieving means is configured to read the page stripe containing therequested data such that a second set of primary codewords is retrieved,wherein reading of page stripe is performed with a second latency longerthan the first latency; the error correction means is configured toperform error correction on the second set of primary codewords of thepage stripe to generate an updated page stripe; the interleaving meansis configured to interleave data from the updated page stripe to arrangesecondary codewords; the error correction means configured to performerror correction on the secondary codewords to generate correctedsecondary codewords, wherein execution of error correction on thesecondary codewords is not performed in parallel with execution of errorcorrection on the primary codewords; the de-interleaving means isconfigured to de-interleave the corrected secondary codewords togenerate a further updated page stripe having an updated second set ofprimary codewords; the error correction means configured to performerror correction on at least a portion of the updated second set ofprimary codewords to generate updated corrected requested data; and thereleasing means configured to release the second corrected requesteddata based at least partly on a determination that the likelihood of therequested data containing an error is less than a predeterminedacceptable failure rate; wherein at least performing error correction isperformed concurrently with a read operation for an end user.

One embodiment includes a method of reading data, wherein the methodincludes: receiving a request for data stored in at least one of aplurality of flash memory devices; identifying a page stripe thatincludes at least a portion of the requested data, wherein the pagestripe comprises a grouping of one or more equally-sized flash pages orinteger fractions of pages of flash pages, wherein each page or eachinteger fraction of the page stripe contains primary parity symbols forerror correction of data stored within the page or integer fraction, andwherein the pages or integer fractions of the page stripe containsecondary parity symbols for error correction of data stored throughoutthe page stripe; retrieving contents of the page stripe in raw form;performing error correction on the primary codewords of the page stripeto generate an updated page stripe containing corrected requested data;determining whether or not at least the corrected requested datacontains error; releasing the corrected requested data based at leastpartly on a determination that the likelihood of the requested datacontaining an error is less than a predetermined acceptable failurerate; when the first corrected requested data is not released,performing the following: interleaving data from the updated page stripeto arrange secondary codewords; performing error correction decoding onthe secondary codewords to generate updated secondary codewords, whereinexecution of error correction on the secondary codewords is notperformed in parallel with execution of error correction on the primarycodewords; de-interleaving the corrected secondary codewords to generatea further updated page stripe having an updated primary codewords;performing error correction on at least a portion of the updated primarycodewords to generate updated corrected requested data; and releasingthe updated corrected requested data based at least partly on thedetermination that the likelihood of the requested data containing anerror is less than a predetermined acceptable failure rate; wherein atleast performing error correction is performed by an integrated circuit;wherein at least performing error correction is performed concurrentlywith a read operation for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to receive a request for data stored in atleast one of a plurality of flash memory devices; the first circuitconfigured to identify a page stripe that includes at least a portion ofthe requested data, wherein the page stripe comprises a grouping of oneor more equally-sized flash pages or integer fractions of pages of flashpages, wherein each page or each integer fraction of the page stripecontains primary parity symbols for error correction of data storedwithin the page or integer fraction, and wherein the pages or integerfractions of the page stripe contain secondary parity symbols for errorcorrection of data stored throughout the page stripe; the first circuitconfigured to retrieve contents of the page stripe in raw form; a secondcircuit configured to perform error correction on the primary codewordsof the page stripe to generate an updated page stripe containingcorrected requested data; the first circuit configured to determinewhether or not at least the corrected requested data contains error; thefirst circuit configured to release the corrected requested data basedat least partly on a determination that the likelihood of the requesteddata containing an error is less than a predetermined acceptable failurerate; when the first corrected requested data is not released: the firstcircuit is configured to interleave data from the updated page stripe toarrange secondary codewords; the second circuit is configured to performerror correction decoding on the secondary codewords to generate updatedsecondary codewords, wherein execution of error correction on thesecondary codewords is not performed in parallel with execution of errorcorrection on the primary codewords; the first circuit is configured tode-interleave the corrected secondary codewords to generate a furtherupdated page stripe having an updated primary codewords; the secondcircuit is configured to perform error correction on at least a portionof the updated primary codewords to generate updated corrected requesteddata; and the first circuit is configured to release the updatedcorrected requested data based at least partly on the determination thatthe likelihood of the requested data containing an error is less than apredetermined acceptable failure rate; wherein the second circuit isconfigured to perform error correction concurrently with a readoperation for an end user.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for reading data, wherein theapparatus includes: a means for receiving a request for data stored inat least one of a plurality of flash memory devices; a means foridentifying a page stripe that includes at least a portion of therequested data, wherein the page stripe comprises a grouping of one ormore equally-sized flash pages or integer fractions of pages of flashpages, wherein each page or each integer fraction of the page stripecontains primary parity symbols for error correction of data storedwithin the page or integer fraction, and wherein the pages or integerfractions of the page stripe contain secondary parity symbols for errorcorrection of data stored throughout the page stripe; a means forretrieving contents of the page stripe in raw form; a means forperforming error correction on the primary codewords of the page stripeto generate an updated page stripe containing corrected requested data;a means for determining whether or not at least the corrected requesteddata contains error; a means for interleaving; a means forde-interleaving; a means for releasing the corrected requested databased at least partly on a determination that the likelihood of therequested data containing an error is less than a predeterminedacceptable failure rate; when the first corrected requested data is notreleased: the interleaving means is configured to interleave data fromthe updated page stripe to arrange secondary codewords; the errorcorrection means is configured to perform error correction decoding onthe secondary codewords to generate updated secondary codewords, whereinexecution of error correction on the secondary codewords is notperformed in parallel with execution of error correction on the primarycodewords; the de-interleaving means is configured to de-interleave thecorrected secondary codewords to generate a further updated page stripehaving an updated primary codewords; the error correction means isconfigured to perform error correction on at least a portion of theupdated primary codewords to generate updated corrected requested data;and the releasing means is configured to release the updated correctedrequested data based at least partly on the determination that thelikelihood of the requested data containing an error is less than apredetermined acceptable failure rate; wherein the error correctionmeans is configured to perform error correction concurrently with a readoperation for an end user.

One embodiment includes a method of storing data to an array of flashmemory devices, wherein the method includes: maintaining one or morelists of page stripes indicating at least which page stripes areavailable to be programmed, the one or more lists of page stripesassociating, for an available page stripe, the following: one or morephysical addresses of pages or integer fractions of pages for the pagestripe; and a gear setting for the page stripe, the gear settingindicating an error correction scheme and corresponding payload sizeassigned to the page stripe; maintaining one or more lists associatingat least virtual addresses with physical addresses for data storedwithin the array of flash memory devices, wherein a virtual address isassociated with at least one physical address; receiving an allocationblock, a virtual address identifying the allocation block, and a requestfor storage of the allocation block into the array of flash memorydevices; determining, based at least partly on the gear assigned to acurrent page stripe and an amount of data, if any, already assigned tothe current page stripe, an extent to which the allocation block can bestored within an available payload of the current page stripe, whereinthe current page stripe corresponds to a page stripe selected from theone or more lists of page stripes that are available to be programmed;assigning at least a first subset of the allocation block to the payloadof the selected page stripe; storing an association of the virtualaddress with (a) the physical address of the current page stripe, andwith (b) a starting location of the allocation block within the currentpage stripe; when enough data has been collected to consider the payloadof the current page stripe as full: performing or having errorcorrection encoding performed for the data of the payload in accordancewith the gear setting associated with the current page stripe;programming the current page stripe to the array; associating thecurrent page stripe with programmed page stripes; selecting a next pagestripe from the one or more lists of available page stripes forsubsequent programming; if the allocation block had not been fullyassigned to the payload of the current page stripe: assigning aremainder of the allocation block to a payload of the next page stripe;and storing an additional association of the virtual address with thephysical address of the next page stripe; wherein the method isperformed by an integrated circuit.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to maintain one or more lists of page stripesindicating at least which page stripes are available to be programmed,the one or more lists of page stripes associating, for an available pagestripe, the following: one or more physical addresses of pages orinteger fractions of pages for the page stripe; and a gear setting forthe page stripe, the gear setting indicating an error correction schemeand corresponding payload size assigned to the page stripe; the firstcircuit further configured to maintain one or more lists associating atleast virtual addresses with physical addresses for data stored withinan array of flash memory devices, wherein a virtual address isassociated with at least one physical address; the first circuit furtherconfigured to receive an allocation block, a virtual address identifyingthe allocation block, and a request for storage of the allocation blockinto the array of flash memory devices; the first circuit furtherconfigured to determine, based at least partly on the gear assigned to acurrent page stripe and an amount of data, if any, already assigned tothe current page stripe, an extent to which the allocation block can bestored within an available payload of the current page stripe, whereinthe current page stripe corresponds to a page stripe selected from theone or more lists of page stripes available for programming; the firstcircuit further configured to assign at least a first subset of theallocation block to the payload of the selected page stripe; the firstcircuit further configured to store an association of the virtualaddress with (a) the physical address of the current page stripe, andwith (b) a starting location of the allocation block within the currentpage stripe; when enough data has been collected to consider the payloadof the current page stripe as full: a second circuit is configured toperform error correction encoding performed for the data of the payloadin accordance with the gear setting associated with the current pagestripe; the first circuit is configured to program the current pagestripe to the array; the first circuit is configured to associate thecurrent page stripe with programmed page stripes; the first circuit isconfigured to select a next page stripe from the one or more lists ofavailable page stripes for subsequent programming; if the allocationblock had not been fully assigned to the payload of the current pagestripe: the first circuit is configured to assign a remainder of theallocation block to a payload of the next page stripe; and the firstcircuit is configured to store an additional association of the virtualaddress with the physical address of the next page stripe.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for storing data to an array offlash memory devices, wherein the apparatus includes: a means formaintaining one or more lists of page stripes indicating at least whichpage stripes are available to be programmed, the one or more lists ofpage stripes associating, for an available page stripe, the following:one or more physical addresses of pages or integer fractions of pagesfor the page stripe; and a gear setting for the page stripe, the gearsetting indicating an error correction scheme and corresponding payloadsize assigned to the page stripe; the maintaining means furthermaintaining one or more lists associating at least virtual addresseswith physical addresses for data stored within the array of flash memorydevices, wherein a virtual address is associated with at least onephysical address; a means for receiving an allocation block, a virtualaddress identifying the allocation block, and a request for storage ofthe allocation block into the array of flash memory devices; a means fordetermining, based at least partly on the gear assigned to a currentpage stripe and an amount of data, if any, already assigned to thecurrent page stripe, an extent to which the allocation block can bestored within an available payload of the current page stripe, whereinthe current page stripe corresponds to a page stripe selected from theone or more lists of page stripes that are available to be programmed; ameans for assigning at least a first subset of the allocation block tothe payload of the selected page stripe; a means for storing anassociation of the virtual address with (a) the physical address of thecurrent page stripe, and with (b) a starting location of the allocationblock within the current page stripe; when enough data has beencollected to consider the payload of the current page stripe as full: ameans for performing or having error correction encoding performed forthe data of the payload in accordance with the gear setting associatedwith the current page stripe; a means for programming the current pagestripe to the array; a means for associating the current page stripewith programmed page stripes; a means for selecting a next page stripefrom the one or more lists of available page stripes for subsequentprogramming; if the allocation block had not been fully assigned to thepayload of the current page stripe: the assigning means furtherassigning a remainder of the allocation block to a payload of the nextpage stripe; and the association storing means further storing anadditional association of the virtual address with the physical addressof the next page stripe.

One embodiment includes a method of reading data from an array of flashmemory devices, wherein the method includes: receiving a request fordata stored in the flash array, the requested data being identified by avirtual address; looking up the following, which are associated with thevirtual address: a physical address or addresses of one or more pagestripes; a starting location for the data within the first page stripeof the one or more page stripes of the flash array; and one or more gearsettings for the one or more page stripes, wherein the gear settings areindicative of a strength of error correction assigned to a page stripeof the one or more page stripes; requesting one or more portions of thepayload of the one or more page stripes associated with the virtualaddress, and providing the one or more gear settings of the one or morepage stripes along with the request; receiving, from an ECC decoder,corrected retrieved portions of the one or more page stripes, and anindication of whether each portion was successfully corrected; and ifall portions of the requested data were successfully corrected by theECC decoder, reassembling the corrected portions into the requested dataand returning the same; wherein the method is performed by an integratedcircuit.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to receive a request for data stored in a flasharray, the requested data being identified by a virtual address; asecond circuit configured to look up the following, which are associatedwith the virtual address: a physical address or addresses of one or morepage stripes; a starting location for the data within the first pagestripe of the one or more page stripes of the flash array; and one ormore gear settings for the one or more page stripes, wherein the gearsettings are indicative of a strength of error correction assigned to apage stripe of the one or more page stripes; the second circuit furtherconfigured to request one or more portions of the payload of the one ormore page stripes associated with the virtual address, and providing theone or more gear settings of the one or more page stripes along with therequest; the second circuit further configured to receive, from an ECCdecoder, corrected retrieved portions of the one or more page stripes,and an indication of whether each portion was successfully corrected;and if all portions of the requested data were successfully corrected bythe ECC decoder, the second circuit is further configured to reassemblethe corrected portions into the requested data and return the same.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for reading data from an array offlash memory devices, wherein the apparatus includes: a means forreceiving a request for data stored in a flash array, the requested databeing identified by a virtual address; a means for looking up thefollowing, which are associated with the virtual address: a physicaladdress or addresses of one or more page stripes; a starting locationfor the data within the first page stripe of the one or more pagestripes of the flash array; and one or more gear settings for the one ormore page stripes, wherein the gear settings are indicative of astrength of error correction assigned to a page stripe of the one ormore page stripes; a means for requesting one or more portions of thepayload of the one or more page stripes associated with the virtualaddress; a means for providing the one or more gear settings of the oneor more page stripes along with the request; a means for receiving, froman ECC decoder, corrected retrieved portions of the one or more pagestripes, and an indication of whether each portion was successfullycorrected; and a means for reassembling; wherein if all portions of therequested data were successfully corrected by the ECC decoder, thereassembling means further reassembling the corrected portions into therequested data and returning the same.

One embodiment includes a method of reclaiming flash blocks of a flasharray, wherein the method includes: selecting a block grid forreclamation, wherein block grids contain complete page grids; for validdata stored in the block grid, reading, performing error correction, andjournaling into available page stripes of the flash array, wherein validdata includes valid allocation blocks, wherein an ECC decoder used forperforming error correction generates an indication as to whether or notcorrection for at least the valid data from the flash array has metcriteria indicating that a different gear to be selected; erasing theblocks of the block grid; updating gear settings for the page stripes ofthe block grid based at least partly on corresponding indications fromthe ECC decoder; and making the page stripes of the block grid availablefor writing; wherein at least selecting and making are performed by anintegrated circuit.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to select a block grid for reclamation, whereinblock grids contain complete page grids; an ECC decoder; for valid datastored in the block grid, the first circuit is further configured toread, the ECC decoder is configured to perform error correction, and thefirst circuit is further configured to journal into available pagestripes of a flash array, wherein valid data includes valid allocationblocks, wherein the ECC decoder generates an indication as to whether ornot correction for at least the valid data from the flash array has metcriteria indicating that a different gear to be selected; the firstcircuit further configured to erase the blocks of the block grid; thefirst circuit further configured to update gear settings for the pagestripes of the block grid based at least partly on correspondingindications from the ECC decoder; and the first circuit furtherconfigured to make the page stripes of the block grid available forwriting.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for reclaiming flash blocks of aflash array, wherein the apparatus includes: a means for selecting ablock grid for reclamation, wherein block grids contain complete pagegrids; a means for reading; a means for ECC decoding; a means forjournaling; for valid data stored in the block grid, the reading meansfurther reading, the ECC decoding means further performing errorcorrection, and the journaling means further journaling into availablepage stripes of the flash array, wherein valid data includes validallocation blocks, wherein the ECC decoding means is configured togenerate an indication as to whether or not correction for at least thevalid data from the flash array has met criteria indicating that adifferent gear to be selected; a means for erasing the blocks of theblock grid; a means for updating gear settings for the page stripes ofthe block grid based at least partly on corresponding indications fromthe ECC decoder; and a means for making the page stripes of the blockgrid available for writing.

One embodiment includes a method of programming data to a plurality offlash memory devices, wherein the method includes: associating two ormore flash memory pages or integer fractions of flash memory pages fromone or more integrated circuits or planes with a page stripe, wherein apage is associated with a set of primary ECC codewords, and a pagestripe can optionally be associated with a set of secondary and primaryover secondary parity (PoSP) ECC codewords; associating two or moreflash memory stripes from different integrated circuits or planes with apage grid, wherein the page grid is associated with a group of tertiaryECC codewords, wherein the tertiary ECC is usable as an erasure code,and wherein a last page stripe of the page grid has a reduced payloadcapacity; receiving data to be programmed; error correction encoding thereceived data to be stored within each page stripe to generate at leastprimary ECC codewords for the pages or integer fractions of the pagestripe; calculating tertiary ECC parity across the page grid in asequence such that a tertiary ECC codeword includes a number of symbolsresiding on every page no greater than the erasure capability of thetertiary ECC codeword; arranging the tertiary parity data such that thetertiary parity data is broken up and spread for programming across alast page stripe; and programming the pages of the page grid; wherein atleast performing error correction encoding is performed in an integratedcircuit.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to associate two or more flash memory pages orinteger fractions of flash memory pages from one or more integratedcircuits or planes with a page stripe, wherein a page is associated witha set of primary ECC codewords, and a page stripe can optionally beassociated with a set of secondary and primary over secondary parity(PoSP) ECC codewords; the first circuit is further configured toassociate two or more flash memory stripes from different integratedcircuits or planes with a page grid, wherein the page grid is associatedwith a group of tertiary ECC codewords, wherein the tertiary ECC isusable as an erasure code, and wherein a last page stripe of the pagegrid has a reduced payload capacity; the first circuit is furtherconfigured to receive data to be programmed; a second circuit configuredto error correction encode the received data to be stored within eachpage stripe to generate at least primary ECC codewords for the pages orinteger fractions of the page stripe; the second circuit is furtherconfigured to calculate tertiary ECC parity across the page grid in asequence such that a tertiary ECC codeword includes a number of symbolsresiding on every page no greater than the erasure capability of thetertiary ECC codeword; and the first circuit is further configured toarrange the tertiary parity data such that the tertiary parity data isbroken up and spread for programming across a last page stripe; and thefirst circuit is further configured to program the pages of the pagegrid such that data is programmed to a plurality of flash memorydevices.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for programming data to a pluralityof flash memory devices, wherein the apparatus includes: a means forassociating two or more flash memory pages or integer fractions of flashmemory pages from one or more integrated circuits or planes with a pagestripe, wherein a page is associated with a set of primary ECCcodewords, and a page stripe can optionally be associated with a set ofsecondary and primary over secondary parity (PoSP) ECC codewords; ameans for associating two or more flash memory stripes from differentintegrated circuits or planes with a page grid, wherein the page grid isassociated with a group of tertiary ECC codewords, wherein the tertiaryECC is usable as an erasure code, and wherein a last page stripe of thepage grid has a reduced payload capacity; a means for receiving data tobe programmed; a means for error correction encoding the received datato be stored within each page stripe to generate at least primary ECCcodewords for the pages or integer fractions of the page stripe; a meansfor calculating tertiary ECC parity across the page grid in a sequencesuch that a tertiary ECC codeword includes a number of symbols residingon every page no greater than the erasure capability of the tertiary ECCcodeword; a means for arranging the tertiary parity data such that thetertiary parity data is broken up and spread for programming across thelast page stripe; and a means for programming the pages of the pagegrid.

One embodiment includes a method of recovering data from a failed pageof flash memory, wherein the method includes: reading contents of flashpages of a page grid containing the failed page, wherein tertiary paritysymbols are distributed among the pages of a last page stripe of thepage grid, wherein each of the pages of the page grid have ECC codewordsstored therein; (a) performing error correction on each page stripe ofthe page grid according to the gear with which the page stripe wasencoded; (b) arranging the data of the page grid to form tertiarycodewords; (c) marking symbols of the tertiary codewords that areassociated with the failed page as erasures; (d) performing errorcorrection decoding using mixed error and erasure decoding on thetertiary codewords to update the tertiary codewords; (e) arranging theupdated tertiary codewords to generate corrected versions of the pagestripes; (f) performing error correction on page stripes of the pagegrid according to the gear with which each page stripe was encoded;performing one or more iterations of (b) through (f) until a stoppingcriterion is reached or a determination that the recovered data has beenrecovered without error; and releasing the recovered data to therequester based at least partly on the determination that the recovereddata has been recovered without error; wherein at least (a) is performedin an integrated circuit.

One embodiment includes an apparatus, wherein the apparatus includes: afirst circuit configured to read contents of flash pages of a page gridcontaining a failed page of flash memory, wherein tertiary paritysymbols are distributed among the pages of a last page stripe of thepage grid, wherein each of the pages of the page grid have ECC codewordsstored therein; a second circuit configured to (a) perform errorcorrection on each page stripe of the page grid according to the gearwith which the page stripe was encoded; the first circuit configured to(b) arrange the data of the page grid to form tertiary codewords; thefirst circuit configured to (c) mark symbols of the tertiary codewordsthat are associated with the failed page as erasures; the second circuitconfigured to (d) perform error correction decoding with mixed error anderasure decoding on the tertiary codewords to update the tertiarycodewords; the first circuit configured to (e) arrange the updatedtertiary codewords to generate corrected versions of the page stripes;the second circuit configured to (f) perform error correction on pagestripes of the page grid according to the gear with which each pagestripe was encoded; wherein the first circuit and the second circuit areconfigured to iterate performance of (b) through (f) until a stoppingcriterion is reached or a determination that the recovered data has beenrecovered without error; and the first circuit configured to release therecovered data to the requester based at least partly on thedetermination that the recovered data has been recovered without error.

One embodiment includes an apparatus for recovering data from a failedpage of flash memory, wherein the apparatus includes: a means forreading contents of flash pages of a page grid containing the failedpage, wherein tertiary parity symbols are distributed among the pages ofa last page stripe of the page grid, wherein each of the pages of thepage grid have ECC codewords stored therein; a means for recoveringdata, the recovering data means further: (a) performing error correctionon each page stripe of the page grid according to the gear with whichthe page stripe was encoded; (b) arranging the data of the page grid toform tertiary codewords; (c) marking symbols of the tertiary codewordsthat are associated with the failed page as erasures; (d) performingerror correction decoding using mixed error and erasure decoding on thetertiary codewords to update the tertiary codewords; (e) arranging theupdated tertiary codewords to generate corrected versions of the pagestripes; (f) performing error correction on page stripes of the pagegrid according to the gear with which each page stripe was encoded;wherein the recovering data means further performing one or moreiterations of (b) through (f) above until a stopping criterion isreached or a determination that the recovered data has been recoveredwithout error; and a means for releasing the recovered data to therequester based at least partly on the determination that the recovereddata has been recovered without error.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These drawings and the associated description herein are provided toillustrate specific embodiments of the invention and are not intended tobe limiting.

FIGS. 1A and 1B illustrate a conventional flash page arrangement.

FIG. 2 illustrates a flash programming process according to anembodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates an overview of a decoding process.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of storage of user data in a flash pageaccording to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of an arrangement for flash page stripeother than the last page stripe according to an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a flash page grid arrangement accordingto an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a flash page stripe arrangement for thelast page stripe of a page grid according to an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a decoding process according to anembodiment of the invention.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of decoding a supporting page stripeaccording to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of a process for recovery of a failedpage.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of a flash page ECC gear progression.

FIG. 12 illustrates the operation of a virtual/physical translationtable, which is used by the journaling engine of FIG. 13.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example of a block diagram for a solid-statedrive controller according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 14 illustrates a process that a journaling engine can perform toexecute write requests.

FIG. 15 illustrates a process that a journaling engine can perform toexecute read requests.

FIG. 16 describes a process that a journaling engine can perform toreclaim regions of flash, making them available for writing

In this description, reference is made to the drawings in which likereference numerals indicate identical or functionally similar elements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SPECIFIC EMBODIMENTS

Although particular embodiments are described herein, other embodimentsof the invention, including embodiments that do not provide all of thebenefits and features set forth herein, will be apparent to those ofordinary skill in the art. For example, one embodiment of the inventioncorresponds to an SSD memory controller or a flash drive controller withone or more of the following features: (1) translation of logical orvirtual addresses and real addresses via a journaling file system orflash translation layer to reduce the number of program/erase cycles tothe memory cells (see FIG. 12); (2) selection of a strength of errorcorrection coding based on a raw bit error rate (see FIG. 11); (3)provision of one or more additional error correction codes so that lowerlatency reads for small numbers of errors are possible as welladditional error correction for larger numbers of errors (see FIGS. 8and 9); and/or (4) rebuilding of an entire failed page from redundantdata (see FIG. 10). Each of these features will be described in moredetail in the following.

Embodiments of the invention advantageously provide relatively lowuncorrectable bit error rates for flash memory, low write amplification,long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage densitysuch that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be implemented using relativelyinexpensive MLC flash for an enterprise storage application. MLC flashcan be half or less the price of the SLC flash per bit of storage. Thus,the relatively low price of a sophisticated SSD controller can result ina substantial cost savings to an SSD implemented with MLC versus an SSDimplemented with SLC. In addition, while described generally inconnection with solid-state drives, the principles and advantagesdisclosed herein are applicable to other flash drives.

The techniques disclosed herein can be implemented by software/firmwareinstructions executed by a processor, by dedicated hardware, or by acombination of software/firmware and hardware. Instructions for thesoftware/firmware can be stored in a tangible, non-transitorycomputer-readable medium.

DEFINITIONS

The following definitions may be helpful in understanding thespecification.

xEy: x times 10 raised to the y-th power, that is x(10^(y)). Thus 2.1E6is 2,100,000, and 5E-3 is 0.005.

RBER: Raw Bit Error Rate. RBER refers to the number of differences(errors) between the data written to a region of flash, and the dataread from the flash, divided by the total number of bits in that region.

UBER: Uncorrected Bit Error Rate. This refers to the number ofdifferences (errors) between a set of data blocks sent to a flash filesystem, and the contents of those data blocks when read back from theflash file system, divided by the total number of bits in the datablock(s).

ECC: Error Correction Coding is a class of techniques in which redundantinformation (parity) is added to information (information bits) in sucha way that if errors are subsequently introduced, the originalinformation bits can be recovered. ECC can also stand for errorcorrection code, corresponding to the parity symbols themselves. An ECChas a correction capability, which represents its ability to correcterrors. In the simplest form, this may be a certain number of bits T perECC codeword length N, but in complex codes the correction capabilitycan be hard to represent succinctly, and is often expressed instatistical terms, such as the RBER (for random errors) that can bereduced to a desired UBER.

Metadata: Information stored by the file system for the purpose ofmanaging the storage and retrieval of user information from the storagearray. This information may include the mapping of user allocationblocks to physical locations, as well as information about the flasharray itself. Metadata is a broad term to describe information that isstored in flash, but is not user data, ECC parity, or unused space.

Codeword: a set of K information symbols, plus P parity symbolscalculated from the information symbols by a predetermined formula. Inthe case of BCH codes, a symbol is 1 bit; in the case of RS codes it ism bits, where m is the order of the code. The information bits cancorrespond to a portion of user data 401 (FIG. 4), 501 a-501 d (FIG. 5),701 a-701 d (FIG. 7) or to metadata, which will be considered user dataherein. However, for extra redundancy, a portion of the parity of anearlier-in-time ECC code, such as the Primary ECC 702 can be part of the“block of data” for a subsequent ECC, such as a secondary ECC block code703. The information block and the parity ECC of a codeword do not needto be stored adjacent to one another.

Page Stripe: A grouping of one or more equally-sized flash pages (orinteger fractions of pages, such as ½ a page) which can be readmore-or-less simultaneously, and which can be managed as a single regionfor the purpose of journaling. A page stripe has a unique gear settingat any given time, and has a payload capacity which is an integer numberof journaling cells. A page stripe should be made up of pages ondifferent flash planes or, preferably, different dies. For both latencyand reliability purposes, it is preferable to use pages residing ondifferent dice and attached to different data buses. In one embodiment,a page stripe comprises 4320 bytes on each of four pages, the four pagesbeing on separate dice attached to separate ONFI buses.

Page Grid: A grouping of associated page stripes (or pages when pagestripes are not used), wherein tertiary error protection exists toprotect the pages of the page grid. The tertiary error correction ispreferably an erasure code such as RS or LDPC, capable of rebuildingdata lost when a page of the page grid becomes unreadable.

Block Stripe: A set of flash blocks from one or more dies in a flasharray that contains a set of complete page stripes.

Block Grid: A set of flash blocks from one or more dies in a flash arraythat contains a set of complete page grids.

Flash die: A monolithic piece of semiconductor material containing flashmemory and control circuitry. A flash package typically contains betweenone and eight flash dies. Flash dies are often referred to as logicalunits (LUNs).

Gear: In the context of this disclosure, a “gear” is a set ofparameter(s) specifying an error correction coding scheme, including oneor more of the payload capacity, the type and parameters of eachcomponent code, the interleaving scheme, and parameters used fordetermining whether the gear is appropriate for a particular situation.For example, the “Gear 1” sections of Tables III, IV, and V, plus theThreshold G1, collectively define Gear 1.

Block: Depending on context, a “block” can refer to: the smallesterasable unit within a flash memory, can refer to an amount of data overwhich an error correction code is calculated, can refer to a blockwithin a flowchart or process, or can refer to an addressable unit ofinput/output (and corresponding to a particular virtual address orlogical block address or LBA) of a data storage device, such as a harddisk, which is emulated by a solid-state drive or a flash drive. It willbe apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art which is intended basedon context.

Journaling Cell: The minimum unit of data for which the journalingengine or flash translation layer has a logical-to-physical mapping. Inone embodiment, a journaling cell is 536 bytes, comprising 512 user databytes, 8 bytes of data integrity field (DIF), 8 bytes of data integrityextension (DIX), and 8 bytes of journaling engine metadata.

High confidence: the probability of the opposite result is less than apredetermined acceptable error probability, such as, 1E-16.

Problems Recognized by Applicant

A conventional approach to error management for MLC-based SSD canexhibit a number of weaknesses. In one example of a conventionalapproach, the SSD controller is revised for each brand and technologygeneration of flash, in order to support the specified ECC. In anotherexample, ECC codes being specified by the vendors tend to be ones thatare easy to implement, but which have performance far below thetheoretical maximum defined by the Shannon limit.

In another example, one conventional approach applies the same degree oferror correction to all parts of the flash memory. However, flash memoryis available in a NOR type and in a NAND type, with the NAND type havingmore storage density and thus lower costs. An SSD is typicallyimplemented with the NAND type. Experimental results show that someareas of a NAND flash, particularly the upper pages of an MLC flash, andmemory cells residing farthest from the sense amplifiers can exhibitmany times the error rates of other areas. In another example, aconventional approach applies the same degree of error correction to theflash memory throughout its lifespan. Experimental results show that theerror rate of a flash memory typically increases with increased numberof program/erase cycles.

Journaling File Systems or Flash Translation Layer

Flash memory based storage systems can suffer from write amplification.In flash memory, the minimum erasable block size, typically 1 MB ormore, is much larger than on hard disks using platters. A file system,which is typically part of an operating system of a host, exchanges datawith a data storage device in different kinds of blocks, which shouldnot be confused with storage blocks or erase blocks, which correspond tothe minimum erasable unit in a flash device. Data is transferred to andfrom a host and a block device, such as a hard disk drive or otherstorage device, in units of data termed allocation blocks herein. Theseallocation blocks can correspond to “disk sectors” in a hard disk drive.Each of these allocation blocks has a virtual address. A flashtranslation layer is used so that a flash drive can emulate a hard diskdrive by transferring data to and from the host in allocation blocks asexpected by the file system. An example of a flash translation layer isdescribed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,485 to Amir Ban, the disclosure ofwhich is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein.

An allocation block is a sequence of words, such as bits or bytes ormultiples thereof, of a certain block size, and is the minimum unit ofdata that is transferred to or from a host and a data storage device,such as a flash drive or a hard disk drive. While the allocation blocksize can vary among data storage devices, the allocation block size isalways fixed for a particular data storage device. Examples of anallocation block size that have been used in the past include 512, 520,528, 4096, and 4224 bytes. However, other allocation block sizes arepossible. The data storage device can communicate its allocation blocksize and number of available allocation blocks to the host in responseto low-level commands from the host.

The number of address bits can vary in a very wide range. For example,the ATA-1 standard has 28-bit addresses and the ATA-6 standard has48-bit addresses. Typically, an interface standard requires that thevirtual address start at 0 and be contiguous up to the last allocationblock available on the drive.

To modify a piece of data in flash memory, an entire storage block ofthe flash memory containing the data is read, the entire storage blockerased, and then some or all of the data can be modified and writtenback. If the flash memory is mapped into a conventional file systemwithout a flash translation layer, in which the physical address of dataon the flash memory is determined by the apparent address or logicalblock address in the user file system, this disadvantage can lead torelatively large amounts of reading or writing when files are beingaltered, which slows down write operations. Other problems also arise.For instance, if a few files are regularly updated, one part of theflash memory may wear out long before others. Even when wear leveling isutilized, such erase and programming operations can drastically shortenthe life of a solid-state drive or flash drive.

Write amplification describes a ratio between user data written, forexample, one 512 byte disk sector, and the total amount of data that isactually written to the flash memory. For example, when an entire block,for example, 256 pages of 8 sectors each, is rewritten to alter onesector, then the write amplification is 2048. Block sizes and writeamplification can vary from the example shown. However, this very largevalue for write amplification means that writes to the SSD will take arelatively long time, and due to the write amplification, wear out thedrive quite relatively quickly, which makes physically addressed SSDsimpractical for any job that involves modifying small amounts of data ona regular basis.

To solve these and other problems, a journaling file system or flashtranslation layer (FTL) can be used, in which data to be written isstored to the flash in essentially the order it arrives, and a mappingtable between the “apparent address” or virtual address and the “actualphysical address” is maintained by the flash controller. The foregoingis a simplified description, but should serve to help understand theprinciples and advantages of certain embodiments of the invention.

Under a journaling file system, write amplification factors approachingof 1/(2u−u^2) can be achieved, in which u is the proportion of the drivethat is not currently full of data. Maintaining write amplification at arelatively low value throughout the life of a device can help achievehigh throughput, good flash life expectancy, and low thermaldissipation.

Error Correction Coding

One way of improving the performance of an ECC solution is to expand thesize of the error correction block (information portion of a codeword)over which the ECC is applied. Two-dimensional “Turbo Product Codes”,with iterative decode are a way of creating very large block codes whilemaintaining a reasonable circuit size and power.

However, if the information portion of a turbo code block issubstantially larger than a typical user data request, the resultingsolution will suffer from high latency and wasted throughput. Thisoccurs because in order to decode even a small portion of a codeword,the entire codeword must still be read from flash storage. The latencygoes up because the ECC decode operation cannot be completed until theentire block is read. Also, this additional data access can lowerthroughput for the SSD.

The illustrated embodiment replaces a conventional 1-dimensional BCH ECCcode with a 3-dimensional turbo code formed from block ECC codes.Alternatively, 2 dimensions can be used and other forms of block codescan be used. In one embodiment, the 2 or 3 dimensions (for primary,secondary, and/or tertiary ECC) are each orthogonal to each other suchthat a codeword of one dimension shares at most one symbol with acodeword of another dimension. In another embodiment, the primary andsecondary codewords are either disjoint or at least partially orthogonalto each other. Table I summarizes primary, secondary, and tertiary errorcorrection characteristics according to one embodiment of the invention.

TABLE I Type of Error Correction Data Protection Primary within a pageor integer fraction of a page Secondary within a page stripe Tertiarywithin a page grid

Orthogonality refers to the way in which one set of codewords andanother set of codewords relate. In particular, given a codeword from afirst set and a codeword from a second set, orthogonality refers to thenumber of symbols at which the codewords intersect. Two codeword setsare exactly orthogonal if they intersect at exactly one symbol. To theextent that 2 codewords intersect at more than one symbol, they are onlypartially orthogonal. When two codewords do not share any symbols, theyare disjoint. Symbol sets are orthogonal if all members from a first setare orthogonal or disjoint with respect to a second set. Note that asymbol for a BCH code is a bit, while for an RS code a symbol is m bits,where m is the order of the code.

A high degree of orthogonality reduces the chances that a small patternof errors is uncorrectable by the ECC scheme. In one embodiment, theorthogonality of the primary, secondary, and tertiary dimensions areimplemented by selecting data for each primary, secondary, and tertiarycodeword based on a predetermined interleave pattern.

For example, in the illustrated embodiment, the block data portion ofthe primary codewords can be taken sequentially as is common practicefor ECC on flash pages. The block data portion of the secondarycodewords can be taken by, for example, taking a bit of data, thenskipping an amount of data at least equal to the block data size of aprimary codeword to take the next bit of data for the block data portionof the secondary codeword, and so on, until the block data portion ofthe secondary codeword is filled. The skipping of data can beimplemented by utilizing an appropriately sized skip factor ininterleaving. The subsequent secondary codeword can retain the patternwith a one bit shift to capture new data, and so on. Similarly, theblock data portion for the tertiary codewords uses another pattern,preferably one with even larger amounts of spacing between selections ofbits than for the secondary codewords because for efficiency, it isdesirable to access fewer pages of data for the decoding of secondarycodewords than it would be to access tertiary codewords.

As will be explained later, decoding of the foregoing structure can bequite efficient. For the usual case in which the data is relativelyuncorrupted, primary ECC decoding alone can confirm good data or correctthe correctable errors such that data can usually be retrieved withrelatively low latency. However, additional error correction isavailable to be invoked as needed, giving the best of low latency andmore robust error correction.

One embodiment of invention avoids wasted-throughput and latencyproblems by choosing the primary ECC such that it can be decoded withonly part of the total page stripe available. Most of the time, only theprimary codewords containing the user-requested data need to be fetched,and the user data can be released after only a primary decodingoperation. Only when the primary decoding operation is unable to performthe correction with high certainty does a higher latency decodeoperation need to be invoked. The primary ECC and its decode algorithmshould be carefully chosen so that, even in the presence of relativelyhigh bit error rate, the primary ECC can correct the errors present witha relatively high probability, for example, in one embodiment, at least99% of the time, and almost never performs a “false decode.” Othervalues are applicable, such as, but not limited to, at least 95% of thetime or at least 90% of the time. Typically, it will be desirable tokeep an expected amount of latency relatively low. The average amount oflatency can be estimated by summing (a) the length of time that it takesto read the data and perform primary decoding; (b) the probability thatthe data is not released after primary decoding times the length of timethat it takes to read a full page stripe and perform theprimary/secondary iterative decoding operation; and (c) the probabilitythat the data is not released after primary or primary/secondarydecoding times the length of time that it takes to read a full page gridand perform tertiary/secondary/primary iterative decoding operation.

A false decode occurs when the primary ECC decoding process deduces thatit has properly corrected the data, when in fact it has added errors. Ifa false decode occurs without detection, incorrect data would bereleased, which is an occurrence that should be kept to a very lowlevel. For example, the false decode rate should be less than 1E-16.

The desired rate of false decodes can be guaranteed by choosing aprimary quick-release threshold Qp≦Tp, such that Eq. 1 is satisfied.

$\begin{matrix}{{\left( \frac{2{Tp}}{N\; p} \right) \cdot \left( \frac{1}{{Tp}!} \right) \cdot {\prod\limits_{i = 1}^{{Tp} - {Qp} - 1}\;\left( \frac{{Tp} - i + 1}{N\; p} \right)}} < {aUBER}} & {{Eq}.\mspace{14mu} 1}\end{matrix}$

In Eq. 1, the “!” indicates factorial, aUBER corresponds to apredetermined acceptable uncorrected bit error rate, Tp corresponds tothe correction capability of the primary ECC, and Np corresponds to thesize of a primary codeword. The expression of Eq. 1 is solved for thevalue of Qp. The calculations described in Eq. 1 can be performed duringa design stage, during production test or the like, and the valueobtained for the parameter Qp can be stored or programmed into an SSDcontroller 1300 (FIG. 13). The quick-release parameter Qp can vary basedon gear selection.

If ECC correction is performed, Qp or fewer bits are corrected, the datamay be immediately released. If more than Qp bits are corrected, or thecodeword is uncorrectable, then the result of the error correction isnot certain. In this case, a page stripe should be fetched, and aniterative decoding operation using secondary codewords performed. Thedecoding operation of a page stripe can takes a great deal longer timethan the primary decoding operation, but so long as the likelihood ofrequiring a page stripe decode can be kept sufficiently low (e.g. 1% orless), the impact on the average latency and throughput isadvantageously relatively small.

The desired low likelihood of full stripe decodes can be achieved bychoosing a maximum operating raw bit error rate G such that the safecorrection capability (Qp) is sufficient to correct the targeted BitError Rate at least 99% of the time, as calculated by Eq. 2.

$\begin{matrix}{P_{corrected} \approx {\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{Qp}\;{\begin{pmatrix}N \\i\end{pmatrix}G^{i}}} \geq 0.99} & {{Eq}.\mspace{14mu} 2}\end{matrix}$

FIG. 2 illustrates a flash programming process, which includes errorcorrection encoding, according to an embodiment of the invention. Theprocess can be implemented by software or firmware executed by aprocessor, by hardware, or by a combination of both software or firmwareand hardware. For example, the process can be performed by a flash drivecontroller, which will be described later in connection with FIG. 13. Itwill be appreciated by the skilled practitioner that the illustratedprocess can be modified in a variety of ways. For example, in oneembodiment, various stages can be implemented in a pipelined fashionand/or performed in parallel. For example, in another embodiment,various portions of the illustrated process can be combined, can berearranged in an alternate sequence, can be removed, or the like. At thestart of the process, it is assumed that, when variable, a particularstrength of ECC has been selected for the various ECC encoders.

The process begins in a stage 202 in which the process receives a writecommand and the data (information) to be written. The write command andthe data can be received from a journaling engine. As will be explainedlater, data can also correspond to error correction code fromearlier-in-time encoding. The process advances from the stage 202 to astage 204. The amount of data for each page stripe can be pre-arrangedbased on the type and strength of the ECC currently selected for thepage stripe.

In the stage 204, the process distributes the data among the n lanes ofthe SSD to which the data will ultimately be written. The lanes can beparallel data buses to which the flash devices of the SSD are connected.In one embodiment, each lane is an 8 bit wide open NAND flash interface(ONFI) bus or a TOGGLE bus. The distribution of data can be done avariety of ways. For example, bit interleaving can be used to distributethe data. In another example, a first received byte can be allocated toa first lane, a second received byte to a second lane, a third receivedbyte to a third lane, a fourth received byte to a fourth lane, a fifthreceived byte back to the first lane, and so on, to distribute the dataamong the lanes in a manner similar to a card dealer dealing cards toplayers. The distribution of the data can be by, for example, splittinga 32-bit data bus into four separate 8-bit buses, one to each of fourengines implementing the stages 206. In another embodiment, sequentiallyreceived data can be used to fill one entire page (or integer fraction)of a page stripe, and then continue on to fill the next page (or integerfraction) of the page stripe, and so forth. The process advances fromthe stage 204 to the stages 206. Stage 206 and stage 208 are performedfor each lane.

In the stages 206, for a particular lane, the process can be consideredto break up the data for the lane into block data sized portions forcodewords of that lane. For example, start of block andend-of-information-block markers can be added, and data flow pauseduntil the parity insertion in the stage 208 is complete. The processadvances from the stages 206 to stages 208.

In the stages 208, the process calculates the ECC parity (the PrimaryParity) corresponding to the information portion of the codeword, andinserts said parity into the stream. The resulting data stream isillustrated in FIG. 4. A skilled practitioner will recognize that theillustrated process can be modified in a number of ways, including theuse of shortened codes, non-systematic codes, and the like. The processcan perform the stages 206, 208 in a pipelined fashion, or in a largebatch.

Outputs of the stages 208 are provided to the stage 210 for secondaryprocessing, to the stage 216 for tertiary processing, and to the stage222 for writing to the flash. It should be noted that data can bewritten sequentially to the data or cache register of a flash device, solong as the previously written data is not being changed. Alternately, acomplete page stripe of data can be accumulated in a data buffer in thecontroller prior to any write commands being issued. In addition, whenwriting relatively large amounts of data, it can be desirable to performwrite operations in parallel. For example, a flash memory die can havemultiple planes that can be written at the same time. Thus, there can bemultiple areas of memory set aside for buffers for page stripes and fortertiary parity calculation.

In the stage 210, data from the stages 208 is observed. Each bit isassigned to one of a set of secondary codewords, in accordance with theprinciples of turbo coding. In a preferred implementation, in whichthere are Cs secondary codewords for a particular gear, data from eachprimary codeword is assigned on a round-robin, bitwise basis to thesecondary codewords, such that each secondary codeword has asubstantially equal number of bits (plus or minus 1) from each primarycodeword. The rearranged bits are passed to the stage 212. After theuser data and primary parity on user data has been processed, the stage210 is complete for the page stripe. Secondary parity, tertiary parity,PoSP and PoTP, as will be described later, can be used in the stage 210.

In the stage 212, the assembled bits are treated as the information bitsof a secondary ECC code. In one embodiment, the secondary ECC code is aBCH code. In the stage 212, the ECC parity bits corresponding to theinformation bits of the assembled secondary codewords are calculated. Inone embodiment, the operation of the stage 212 is as follows. Ascratchpad memory of sufficient size for the parity of all the secondarycodewords of a stripe is provided. This memory is set to zero when apage stripe encode is initiated upon entry to the stage 202. Whenevernew information bits are assigned to a secondary codeword in the stage210, then the current value of the scratchpad for that codeword is readand loaded as the state of a linear feedback shift register (LFSR). Thenew data is shifted into the LFSR, and the revised state written back toscratchpad memory. These LFSR operations can be performed in a singlecycle or multiple cycles. After all the secondary codewords for the pagestripe have been fully calculated, the process proceeds to the stage214.

In the stage 214, the secondary parity is read from the scratchpadmemory, and formed into a data stream. The secondary parity is passedback to the stage 204, where the secondary parity is treated as if itwere user data. In the stage 206, the secondary parity is broken up intosections forming the information bits of primary codewords (which can beof different lengths than the ones used for user data) and in the stage208, primary parity (termed “primary on secondary parity or PoSP”) iscalculated over these secondary parity bits. The amount of primaryparity calculated over the secondary parity can be different than forthe user data. The output of the stage 208 is provided to the stage 216for tertiary processing, and to the stage 222 for writing to the flashmemory.

For the stage 210, in one embodiment, each primary codeword should becovered roughly equally by the applicable secondary codewords, andlikewise the information bits of each secondary codeword should containas even a distribution of bits from primary codewords as practical. Thiscan be achieved by, for example, ensuring that the number of secondarycodewords Cs in a page stripe is prime relative to the size (totallength) of each primary codeword Np, or by rotating the order of bitassignments to secondary codewords by one position every Cs bits, everyCs times n bits, wherein n is one or more. In one embodiment, therotation is performed by one position every Cs bytes, that is, with nequal to 8.

The states from the stage 216 through the stage 220 apply to tertiaryprocessing, which operates across a span of two or more page stripes,such as four page stripes. In the stage 210, the stream of primarycodewords from the stage 208, including bits originating from both thestage 202 and the stage 214, are observed. Each bit is assigned to atertiary codeword. In one embodiment, in which each grid contains Wttertiary codewords based on a Reed-Solomon error correction code definedover Galois field gf(2^Mt) for a particular gear, data from each primarycodeword is grouped into symbols of size 2^Mt, and assigned on asymbol-wise round-robin basis to the tertiary codewords, such that eachtertiary codeword has a substantially equal number of bytes (plus orminus 1) from each primary codeword, and a roughly equal number of bytescovered by each secondary codeword. The rearranged bits are passed tothe stage 218. Padding of implied zeroes may be used to reach an integernumber of symbols, according to the known techniques of shortening RScodewords by partial symbols.

In the stage 218, the assembled bits are treated as the information bitsof a tertiary ECC code. In a preferred implementation, the tertiary ECCcode is an RS code. In the stage 218, the ECC parity bits correspondingto the information bits of the assembled secondary codewords arecalculated. In one embodiment, the operation of the stage 212 is asfollows. A scratchpad memory of sufficient size for the parity of thetertiary codewords of the page stripes of one or more grids is provided.The scratchpad memory for each page grid 600 (FIG. 6) is set to zerowhen the first page stripe encode of the grid is started (stage 202 forthat page stripe). Whenever new information bits are assigned to atertiary codeword in the stage 216, the current value of the scratchpadfor that codeword is read and loaded as the state of a Reed-Solomonencoding LFSR. The new data is shifted into the LFSR, and the revisedstate written back to scratchpad memory. These LFSR operations can bedone in a single cycle or in multiple cycles. After the tertiarycodewords for the page grid have been fully calculated, the processproceeds to the stage 220.

In the stage 220, the tertiary parity is read from the scratchpadmemory, and formed into a data stream. The tertiary parity is passedback to the stage 204, in which the tertiary parity is treated as if itwere user data. In the stage 206, the tertiary parity is broken up intosections forming the information bits of the primary codewords (whichmay be of different lengths than the ones used for user data) and in thestage 208, ECC parity (termed “primary on tertiary parity” or PoTP) iscalculated over these tertiary parity bits. The amount of primary paritycalculated over the tertiary parity may be different than for the userdata. The output of the stage 208 is provided to the stage 222 forwriting to the flash memory, but not to the stage 210 or the stage 216.

In the operation of the stage 210, each flash page should be coveredroughly equally by the corresponding tertiary codewords, and eachprimary codeword should be covered roughly equally by the tertiarycodewords, and likewise the information bits of each tertiary codewordshould reflect as even a distribution of bits from the primary codewordsas practical. This can be achieved by, for example, ensuring that thenumber Wt of tertiary codewords in a page grid is prime relative to thesize (total length) Np of a primary codeword, or by rotating the orderof bit assignments to tertiary codewords by one position every Wtsymbols, each tertiary codeword symbol having a size of Mt bits.

In one example in which the tertiary symbol size Mt is 8 bits or onebyte, tertiary codeword size Nt is 250 bytes, block data size Kt is 226Bytes, and each tertiary codeword can correct up to 12 symbol errors, upto 24 erasures, or some mix thereof such that the number of erasuresplus twice the number of symbol errors is equal to 24. In oneembodiment, the strength of the tertiary ECC is the same for all gears.

FIG. 3 illustrates an overview of a decoding process for decoding ofinformation encoded by the process described earlier in connection withFIG. 2. The decoding process can be implemented by software or firmwareexecuted by a processor, by hardware, or by a combination of bothsoftware or firmware and hardware. For example, the decoding process canalso be performed by a solid-state drive controller, which will bedescribed later in connection with FIG. 13.

FIG. 3 provides a high level overview of one embodiment of a process ofretrieving and recovering data from the flash memory. It will beappreciated by the skilled practitioner that the illustrated process canbe modified in a variety of ways. For example, in another embodiment,various portions of the illustrated process can be combined, can berearranged in an alternate sequence, can be removed, or the like. In thestage 302, the process receives a request to read certain data from theflash memory. In the stage 304, an attempt is made to recover the datawith minimal latency. The stage 304 will be described in greater detaillater in connection with a partial page stripe decoding portion 304 ofthe process of FIG. 8, with stages 802-804. If that fails, a secondattempt to recover data is made with a stage 308, using additional datastored in the flash memory, and additional error correction processing.The stage 308 will be described later in greater detail later inconnection with a page stripe decoding portion 308 of the process ofFIG. 8. If the stage 308 fails, then a third attempt is made with astage 310, using still further add additional data previously stored inthe flash memory, and further additional processing. The stage 310 willbe described greater detail later in connection with the page griddecoding portion 310 of the process of FIG. 8. If the stage 310 fails,it can be because one particular page, block, or die in the flash arrayhas failed entirely. Thus, a fourth attempt is made with a stage 312,using special recovery techniques that will be described in greaterdetail later in connection with FIG. 10.

If the recovery process of the stage 312 fails, then the user data isuncorrectable, and a report to that effect is made in the stage 314 andin a stage 1034 (FIG. 10). If any of the stages 304, 308, 310, 312 issuccessful, the requested data is returned to the journaling engine in astage 306, along with various status information. The stage 306 isrepresented in more detail by the stages 805, 830, 832 (FIG. 8) and thestage 1034 (FIG. 10).

FIG. 4 illustrates an arrangement for user data stored in a flash pagehaving the same size as that of FIGS. 1A and 1B along with primary ECCdata. An arrangement of secondary ECC and tertiary ECC will be describedlater in connection with FIGS. 5 and 7. Rather than storing the userdata in relatively large portions such as shown in the user space 101(FIG. 1A) and the user data 103 (FIG. 1B) illustrating 4096 byteportions and 1024 byte portions, respectively, the illustratedembodiment preferably stores the user data in much smaller portions. Inone embodiment, the user data 401 (information) to be stored to a flashpage 400 is divided into portions of a length Kp convenient to orefficient for the primary BCH. In an alternative embodiment, the userdata 401 is divided into a portion having a length corresponding to amultiple of Kp payload symbols. After each Kp payload symbols, a numberof BCH parity bits Pp are added 402, for a total of Np parity symbols.The values of Kp and Pp are different for each ECC gear, and can beselected for the desired correction capability, balanced with ease ofimplementation. ECC gearing will be discussed in greater detail later inconnection with FIG. 11. Example values for Kp and Pp are illustrated inTable III. The block data for the primary data includes user data andsometimes metadata. The block data size Kp is not required to have asimple arithmetic relationship to the size of the block used by the filesystem.

After the information bits for that page and their primary parity areadded, a region 403 is reserved for the storage of secondary parity,which in the illustrated embodiment, is calculated over a page stripe,which will be described later in connection with FIGS. 5 and 7. A region404 is also reserved for primary parity on secondary parity (PoSP), thatis, ECC parity information for the data to be stored in the region 403.

Preferably, space is also reserved for a fingerprint 407 or check code,which can be derived or determined from the physical address of theflash page. The fingerprint 407 can be used to verify whether or not anaddress fault has occurred, that is, determine whether or not theretrieved data came from the correctly addressed memory space. In oneembodiment, the fingerprint 407 is derivable from a physical location,such as address, of the page 400. Anything can be used for thefingerprint 407 so long as it identifies the page 400 uniquely, at leastfor a particular lane. Two pages on different lanes can use the samefingerprint 407 because they are physically separated and there is norisk of retrieving data across physically distinct lanes. Many differenttechniques can be used. In one embodiment, a hash code generated fromthe physical address or at least a portion of the physical address isused. The hash code preferably has a relatively large hamming distancesuch that one or more errors can be tolerated. The hash code can bebased on a BCH calculation, on CRCs or the like. Alternatively, theaddress itself and corresponding ECCs can be used, but there is no needto store the actual address itself and it would thus be a relativelyinefficient use of memory space. The use of the address by itselfwithout corresponding ECC could be used, but an address line failure canresult in a change of just one address bit, which in the data could besubject to a random bit error and then be erroneously reported ascorrect. All that is needed is a unique identifier such that the pagecan be identified in some repeatable manner such that the SSD controllercan compare the fingerprint 407 retrieved from flash memory to anexpected value for the fingerprint.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of an arrangement for a first type offlash page stripe 550 according to an embodiment of the invention. Anexample of an arrangement for a second type of flash page stripe 640used for the last page stripe will be described in greater detail laterin connection with FIG. 7. The stripe width Ws of the flash page stripe550 can be within a broad range of numbers of one or more, but forefficiency should match the number of lanes. In the illustratedembodiment, four flash pages 400 a-400 d each in its own lane are usedsuch that the stripe width Ws is 4 with lanes 0 to 3. Other values forthe stripe width Ws will be readily determined by one of ordinary skillin the art.

In the illustrated embodiment, the flash pages 400 a-400 d of the pagestripe 550 share the same address, but belong to different flash lanes,such as to different bits of a data bus. Each of the flash pages 400a-400 d can be as described earlier for the flash page 400 of FIG. 4. Inaddition, note the following. In the illustrated embodiment, user data501 a-501 d (information) can be distributed among the four flash pages400 a-400 d on a byte interleaved round-robin basis as described earlierin connection with the distribution of data among 4 lanes in the stage204 of FIG. 2. In one embodiment, the user data 501 a-501 d is scrambledbefore being stored and unscrambled after it has been decoded as will bedescribed in greater detail later in connection with a decision block804 of FIG. 8. Of course, as more and more data is stored, it willeventually become necessary to write data to different pages of thelanes. Primary parity 502 a-502 d is added on each flash page 400 a-400d as described earlier in connection with the stage 208 of FIG. 2.

As each bit (whether information bit or parity bit) is written to a userdata portion 501 a-501 d or to a primary parity portion 502 a-502 d ofthe page stripe 550, the bit is also used in the calculation of one ofthe Cs secondary ECC codewords, preferably on an individual bitinterleaved basis for robustness. The secondary ECC codewords can bemaintained in scratchpad memory, such as a register or RAM, while thesecondary ECC codewords are being computed. The secondary paritycalculation for a particular codeword of the Cs secondary codewords isupdated as new bits are covered by the particular codeword. After theincoming user data (information) and primary parity bits have beenprocessed by the secondary ECC encoding process, the secondary paritycalculation can be finalized, and the secondary parity can be written tothe secondary parity portion 503 a-503 d of the flash page stripe 550.In one embodiment, the secondary parity is stored on the flash pagestripe 550 on a bit-interleaved manner across the entire flash pagestripe 550.

Primary parity is calculated over the secondary parity bits written toeach flash page, that is, over the data stored in the portions 503 a-503d, and stored in the PoSP portions 504 a-504 d. A fingerprint 507 a-507d for each flash page 400 a-400 d is preferably added to determinewhether or not the retrieved data came from a read of the correct memoryaddress as described earlier in connection with the fingerprint 407 forFIG. 2 for further robustness. The same fingerprint 507 a-507 d can bereused across the pages 400 a-400 d of a particular page stripe 550provided that the pages 400 a-400 d are each in separate lanes becauseeach lane is physically a different set of conductive lines, and thus,unique identification of data is preserved.

FIG. 6 illustrates a page grid 600. The address space of the flashmemory is divided into many page grids 600. Preferably, a page grid 600includes an associated set of pages, each from a different flash memorydie. However, it will be understood that the principles and advantagesdescribed herein will be applicable to systems in which a page grid usesmore than one page each or less than one page each from each flashmemory die. For example, it can be advantageous to build grids frommultiple partial pages, each from a separate die, or to build grids frommultiple pages on separate planes of the same die, or both. In addition,while the illustrated page grid 600 has a “square” arrangement with 4pages across (from 4 lanes) and 4 pages down (from 4 page stripes), thepage grid 600 does not have to be square, nor is it required that thepage stripes making up the page grid 600 be encoded with the same gear.

The pages of the page grid 600 are already associated in a page stripe.In the illustrated embodiment, a page grid 600 is made up of four pagestripes 550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640 having a rank of 4 each, thus the pagegrid 600 has 16 pages 612, 614, 616, 618, 622, 624, 626, 628, 632, 634,636, 638, 642, 644, 646, 648 from 16 different die. Of these pagestripes 550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640, the first three page stripes 550 a,550 b, 550 c are of the first type of flash page stripe 550 describedearlier in connection with FIG. 5, and the last page stripe 640 is ofthe second type of flash page stripe 640 that will be described later inconnection with FIG. 7. The number of lanes and the amount of rank canvary in a very broad range and do not have to be the same. For example,4 lanes and a rank of 8 will also work. A relatively larger number oflanes will typically have more throughput, but can be more complicatedto implement with wider data buses and so forth. Thus, the selection ofthe number of lanes to have and the deepness of rank is subject to anengineering tradeoff.

In the illustrated embodiment, data fills the page grid 600 as follows.Initially, data to be written is written to the first page stripe 550 a.When the first page stripe 550 a is filled with data, then data iswritten to the second page stripe 550 b. When the second page stripe 550b is filled, then data is written to the third page stripe 550 c. Whenthe third page stripe 550 c is filled, then data is written to the lastpage stripe 640 of the page grid 600. When the last page stripe 640 isfilled, then subsequent data is stored to a different page grid. Inaddition, within each page stripe, data is distributed among the pagesof the page stripe in a round-robin manner. For example, with respect tothe first page stripe 550 a, a symbol of data is stored in the firstpage 612, then the next symbol of data is stored in the second page 614,then the next symbol of data is stored in the third page 616, then thenext symbol of data is stored in the fourth page, then the next symbolof data is stored in the first page 612, and so on until the first pagestripe 550 a is filled. In the illustrated embodiment, the symbol sizeused for storage in the pages corresponds to a byte or 8 bits, but othersized symbols can be used.

The data within each page 612, 614, 616, 618, 622, 624, 626, 628, 632,634, 636, 638, 642, 644, 646, 648 in the page grid 600 is covered by itsown set of primary parity data 402 (FIG. 4), 502 a-502 c (FIG. 5). Thedata within a page stripe 550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640 is also protected bya secondary parity 503 a-503 d (FIG. 5), which in turn is protectedwithin the individual pages by the PoSP 504 a-504 d. The pages 642, 644,646, 648 of the last page stripe 640 of the page grid 600 also carry thetertiary parity 705 a-705 d and the primary over tertiary parity (PoTP)706 a-706 d bits as will be described in greater detail later inconnection with FIG. 7. The tertiary parity bits 705 a-705 d protect thepage grid 600 as a whole and are stored in the last page stripe 640.

In one embodiment of the invention, the allocation of bits fromallocation blocks to codewords is as follows. For the purposes of thiscalculation, the bits of a page stripe are numbered starting from 0,such that the first bit of the first byte of lane 0 is bit 0; the lastbit of the first byte of lane 3 is bit 31; the first bit of the secondbyte of lane 0 is bit Ws*8, and so on. The endianness of the bits, forexample, byte order, is not important, so long as consistency ismaintained. For the purposes of these equations, “div” representsinteger division rounding down, and “mod” represents the modulooperator. For example, 11 div 4 equals 2, and 11 mod 4 equals 3. In theillustrated embodiment, the page stripe width Ws is 4.

In the illustrated embodiment, user data from an allocation block isallocated on a bytewise basis to one of Ws primary codewords at a time,that is, one primary codeword per lane). The size or length of eachprimary codeword is represented by Np. After each primary codeword has(Np div 8) bytes, the next set of Ws codewords are used. Mathematically,the primary codeword P to which bit x is allocated can be as expressedin Eq. 3.P(x)=4(x div {Np·Ws})+(x div 8)mod Ws  Eq. 3

Data is also allocated on a bytewise basis to one of Cs secondarycodewords, where Cs corresponds to the number of secondary codewords forthe page stripe. Every Cs bytes, a 1-lane rotation is applied to thesecondary codewords, to avoid the same secondary codeword falling in thesame lane. Mathematically, the secondary codeword to which bit x isallocated can be as expressed in Eq. 4.S(x)=s′(x)−[s′(x)mod Ws]+[{s′(x)−i(x)} mod Ws]  Eq. 4

The variables s′(x) and i(x) can be solved as expressed in Eq. 5 and Eq.6, respectively.s′(x)=(x div 8)mod Cs  Eq. 5i(x)=(x div 8)div Cs  Eq. 6

Data is also allocated on a bytewise basis to one of Ct tertiarycodewords. Every Ct bytes, a 1-lane rotation is applied to the tertiarycodewords, to avoid the same tertiary codeword falling in the same lane.Mathematically, the tertiary codeword to which bit x is allocated can beas expressed in Eq. 7.T(x)=[t′(x)mod Ws]+[{t′(x)−i(x)} mod Ws]  Eq. 7

The variables t′(x) and i(x) can be solved as expressed in Eq. 8 and Eq.9, respectively.t′(x)=(x div 8)mod Ct  Eq. 8i(x)=(x div 8)div Ct  Eq. 9

Primary ECC on the secondary parity (PoSP) and primary ECC on thetertiary parity (PoTP) can follow the same rules as the primary, but thevalues of the codeword length N, the number of information bits in acodeword K, the number of codewords C per page stripe, and thecorrection capability of the ECC or FEC T can be adjusted to make thebits fit into the available space.

The bytewise allocation of data to the secondary means that a givenprimary codewords and secondary codeword tend to share an integer numberof bytes. This is convenient from an implementation point of view, butit can mean that the maximum overlap will tend to be greater, forexample 16 bits, than the minimum possible, for example 14 bits. Thiscondition can lead to “killer pattern” situations in which a smallnumber of errors (for example, 11 errors within a particular 16 bitoverlap, in which Ts<Tp<11). However, these patterns inherently requiremultiple bits errors within a single byte. A Reed-Solomon based tertiaryis very efficient at fixing such “killer patterns.”

Various alternatives exist. For example, in an alternative embodiment ofthe invention, the allocation of bits to codewords can be as follows.Data is allocated on a bytewise basis to one of Ws Primary codewords ata time, that is, one primary codeword per lane). Once each codeword has(Np div 8) bytes, the next set of Ws codewords are used. Mathematically,the primary codeword to which bit x is allocated can be as expressed inEq. 10.P(x)=4[x div(Np·Ws)]+(x div 8)mod Ws  Eq. 10

Data is allocated on a bitwise basis to the Cs secondary codewords. Csis a prime number, or at least relatively prime to both Cp and Ws.S(x)=x mod Cs  Eq. 11

Data is allocated on a bytewise basis to one of Ct tertiary codewords.Ct is a prime number, or at least relatively prime to Cp, Cs, and Ws.Mathematically, the tertiary codeword to which bit x is allocated can beas expressed in Eq. 12.T(x)=(x div 8)mod Ct  Eq. 12

In yet another embodiment of the invention, the allocation of bits tocodewords can be as follows. Data is allocated to each primary codeworduntil it is full. Thus, in this embodiment, every primary codeword isacross all Ws lanes. Data is allocated to the Cs secondary codewords ona round-robin basis.

Tertiary codewords need not be present. If tertiary codewords arepresent, data can be allocated on a bytewise basis to one of Ct tertiarycodewords. Ct should be a prime number, or at least prime relative toCp, Cs, and Ws. Mathematically, the tertiary codeword to which bit x isallocated can be as expressed in Eq. 13.T(x)=(x div 8)mod Ct  Eq. 13

FIG. 7 illustrates a structure for the last page stripe 640 (FIG. 6) ofthe page grid 600. The illustrated last page stripe 640 of the page grid600 includes four flash pages 700 a-700 d. However, the stripe width Wscan vary as described earlier in connection with the flash pages 400a-400 d of FIG. 5.

The structure of the last page stripe 640 can be similar to the pagestripe 550 described earlier in connection with FIG. 5, but hasadditional tertiary ECC and less user data space. The last page stripe640 holds user data 701 a-701 d, primary parity on user data 702 a-702d, secondary parity 703 a-703 d, primary parity on secondary parity(PoSP) 704 a-704 d, and fingerprints 707 a-707 d, which are analogous tothe user data 401, 501 a-501 d, primary parity on user data 402, 502a-502 d, secondary parity 503 a-503 d, primary parity on secondaryparity (PoSP) 504 a-504 d, fingerprints 407, 507 a-507 d respectively,described earlier in connection with FIGS. 4 and 5.

The total user data space is smaller, holding less user information thanother page stripes 550 (FIG. 5) 550 a, 550 b, 550 c (FIG. 6) because thelast page stripe 640 additionally holds tertiary error correctioninformation for the corresponding page grid. The ECC encodingparameters, such as the number of primary codewords Wp, number ofinformation bits Kp per primary codeword, number of bits Np per primarycodeword, number of information bits Ks per secondary parity, number ofbits Ns per secondary codeword, number of secondary codewords Cs perpage stripe can vary somewhat from the ECC encoding parameters used forthe other page stripes 550 a, 550 b, 550 c to allow for efficientpacking. An example of sample ECC parameters will be described later intables following a discussion of FIG. 7. The ECC encoding parameters ofthis last page stripe 640 are preferably selected so that the errorcorrection capability is at least as good as for the other page stripes.

The last page stripe 640 holds the parity bits of the tertiarycodewords, that is, the “tertiary parity” 705 a-705 d, which arecalculated bytewise over the user data 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d, theprimary parity 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702 d, the secondary parity 503 a-503d, 703 a-703 d, and the PoSP 504 a-504 d, 704 a-704 d portions of allthe page stripes 550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640. Thus, every bit of the userdata 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d is covered by at least one primarycodeword, one secondary codeword, and one tertiary codeword. Theallocation can be performed such that each tertiary codeword has anapproximately equal number of bytes from each page of the page grid 600.

The correction capability Tt of the tertiary parity 705 a-705 d shouldbe chosen to be high enough to be able to find the values of all thebytes in any one page (if that page is marked as an erasure, that is,marked as unknowns) of the page grid 600, which then permits therebuilding of a lost page. For example, a page of memory can be lost dueto the failure of a row in a flash memory. The correction capability Ttof the tertiary parity 705 a-705 d should additionally havethree-quarters of the correction capability of the secondary parity 503a-503 d, 703 a-703 d on one page stripe 550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640 for thecase of 4 pages or portions of pages per page stripe. This latterrequirement is based on the assumption that, if one page of the pagegrid 600 fails entirely, the secondary parity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 dfor the corresponding page stripe 550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640 will also beinoperative without correction provided by the tertiary parity 705 a-705d. The tertiary parity 705 a-705 d is itself covered by an appropriatelyresized primary ECC parity over tertiary parity (PoTP) 706 a-706 d.Further details of the correction capability Tt of the tertiary parity705 a-705 d can be as follows. Generally, the extra correctioncapability can be Ws−1/WsWg of the secondary parity, wherein Ws is thenumber of pages in a page stripe, and WsWg is the number of pages in apage grid. In the illustrated example, Ws is 4 and WsWg is 16, such thatcorrection capability Tt of the tertiary parity should further include3/16 of the correction capability of the secondary error parity suchthat, in the illustrated example, the correction capability Tt for thetertiary parity should be able to correct for a missing page and 3/16 ofthe correction capability of the secondary parity. It will be understoodthat the 3/16 figure will vary depending on the number of pages orportions of pages per page stripe and the number of page stripes perpage grid.

In one embodiment, the tertiary ECC has a correction capability equal to(a) half of the maximum number of symbols that each tertiary codewordhas on any one page of the page grid, plus( ) at leastTTs*(Ws−1)/(Wt*Wg*Ws) symbols, wherein TTs corresponds to the totalcorrection capability of ECC codewords calculated across multiple pagesof a page stripe, Ws corresponds to the number of pages in a pagestripe, Wt corresponds to the number of tertiary codewords, and Wgcorresponds to the number of page stripes in a page grid.

The tertiary code is preferably an erasure code, that is, a code that istolerant of missing symbols. Such a code has improved decodingcapability when certain portions of the codewords are known to be highlyerrored. The property of being an erasure code can permit the recoveryof data even if an entire page of data were to become unreadable as canhappen when a die goes bad or when there is a problem with a row in amemory chip. In one embodiment, the tertiary code is a Reed-Solomon (RS)code. In alternative embodiments, the tertiary code can be a Low densityparity check (LDPC) code, Tornado code, Online code, Luby transform (LT)code, Raptor code, or the like. Other applicable erasure codes will bereadily determined by one of ordinary skill in the art. In oneembodiment, the strength of the tertiary code does not vary with the“gearing” of ECC, which will be discussed in greater detail later inconnection with FIG. 11. The tertiary code can deal with a totalfailure, which can happen at any time, whereas the primary and secondarycodes are intended to cover wear out, which happens gradually.

It is not necessary to wait for a complete page grid to be availablebefore writing data to flash. Interim state values for the tertiaryparity calculation can be held in scratchpad memory after each pagestripe, and the calculation resumed on arrival of the next page stripe.In one embodiment of the invention, a plurality of page grids areprogrammed in an interleaved fashion. Each page stripe is identified bya thread ID, associated with a region of scratchpad RAM and a set ofinterim tertiary values. As each page stripe arrives, an encoderretrieves any interim tertiary values, initializes the tertiaryencoders, processes the page stripe, and then either stores the newinterim values back to scratchpad, or writes out the completed tertiaryparity, as appropriate.

The illustrated embodiment has 4 pages per page stripe, and 4 pagestripes per page grid 600. An example of physical capacities of each isdescribed in connection with Table II, with corresponding ECC parametersin Tables III to VII.

TABLE II Page Stripe Grid No. of Pages 1 4 16 Capacity in Bytes 432017280 69120

Table III illustrates an example of data allocation for a first gear,second gear, and third gear amount of ECC strength for the primary ECCwith reference to page stripe 0 550 a, page stripe 1 550 b, page stripe2 550 c, and page stripe 3 640 (FIG. 6). As illustrated in the table,increasing ECC strength corresponds to decreasing ratio R. Asillustrated in Table III, in the illustrated embodiment, the primarypayload of a page stripe is not an integer multiple of 512, 530, 1024,or 2048 bytes, which can be examples of allocation block sizes. However,the primary payload can vary in a very broad range and in alternativeembodiments a particular page stripe and ECC strength can combine togenerate a payload having a multiple of the allocation block size.

TABLE III First Gear Second Gear Third Gear Page Stripe 0, 1, or 2 3 0,1, or 2 3 0, 1, or 2 3 Primary Payload 30 16 27 14 21 11 (536-byte‘Journaling Cells’) Primary Payload 16080 8576 14472 7504 11256 5896(Information Bytes) Primary codeword 1792 1560 1816 1504 808 848information (bits) (Kp) Primary parity bits 110 110 198 198 264 264 percodeword (Pp) Rp = Kp/Np 0.942 0.934 0.902 0.884 0.754 0.763 Correction10 10 18 18 24 24 capability (Tp) Primary codewords 18 11 16 10 28 14per page Primary codewords 72 44 64 40 112 56 per page stripe (WP)Fractional FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP Shortening by Page byPage by Page by Page by Page by Page Total primary 7920 4840 12672 792029568 14784 parity bits per page stripe

Table IV illustrates an example of data allocation for the secondaryECC.

TABLE IV First Gear Second Gear Third Gear Page Stripe 0, 1, or 2 3 0,1, or 2 3 0, 1, or 2 3 Secondary Payload 17072 9184 16056 8496 149527744 (Primary Codeword Bytes) Secondary codeword 1018 498 956 692 990734 length (bits) (Ns) Secondary codeword 1008 488 896 632 880 624information (bits) (Ks) Secondary parity 10 10 60 60 110 110 bits percodeword (Ps) Rs = Ks/Ns 0.990 0.980 0.937 0.913 0.889 0.850 Secondary 11 6 6 11 11 Correction capability (Ts) Secondary 136 152 144 108 136 100codewords per page stripe (Ws) Fractional FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFPFStFP Shortening by PgStr by PgStr by PgStr by PgStr byPgStr by PgStrTotal secondary 1360 1520 8640 6480 14960 11000 parity bits per pagestripe

Table V illustrates an example of data allocation for the primary oversecondary parity (PoSP) ECC.

TABLE V First Gear Second Gear Third Gear Page Stripe 0, 1, or 2 3 0, 1,or 2 3 0, 1, or 2 3 PoSP Payload 172 192 1080 812 1872 1376 (SecondaryParity bytes from 1 stripe) PoSP codeword 388 428 1190 926 1512 1640length (bits) (Np) PoSP codeword 344 384 1080 816 1248 1376 information(bits) (Kp) PoSP parity bits per 44 44 110 110 264 264 codeword (Pp) R =K/N 0.887 0.897 0.908 0.881 0.825 0.839 Correction 4 4 10 10 24 24capability (Tp) PoSP codewords 4 4 8 8 12 8 per page stripe (Wposp)Fractional FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP FStFP Shortening by PgStr byPgStr by PgStr by PgStr by PgStr by PgStr Total PoSP parity 138112 75160137968 75328 137760 75072 bits per page stripe

Table VI illustrates an example of data allocation for the tertiary ECC.

TABLE VI First Second Third Gear Gear Gear Page Stripe 3 3 3 TertiaryPayload (Primary CW, 61208 61208 61208 Secondary Parity, PoSP ParityBytes) Tertiary codeword length (Nt) 250 250 250 RS (bytes) Tertiarycodeword information 226 226 226 (bits) (Kt) Tertiary parity bits per192 192 192 codeword (Pt) Rt = Kt/Nt 0.904 0.904 0.904 Correctioncapability (Tt) bytes 12 12 12 Tertiary (RS) symbols (bytes) 16 16 16per page per codeword (Wt) Fractional Shortening FStFP by FStFP by FStFPby Grid Grid Grid

Table VII illustrates an example of data allocation for the PoTP ECC.

TABLE VII First Second Third Gear Gear Gear Page Stripe 3 3 3 PoTPPayload 6528 6528 6528 (Tertiary Parity Bytes) PoTP codeword 197 197 197length in bytes (N) PoTP codeword 164 164 164 information in bytes (K)PoTP parity bits per 264 264 264 codeword (P) R = K/N 0.832 0.832 0.832Correction 24 24 24 capability (T) PoTP codewords 40 40 40 per pagestripe (Wpotp) Fractional FStFP FStFP FStFP Shortening by Page by Pageby Page Total PoTP parity 10560 10560 10560 bits per page stripe

When allocating bits to ECC dimensions, such as those set out in tablesIII, IV, V, VI, and VII, for a given dimension payload Ix, codewordpayload Kx, and number of codewords Wx, the total payload Wx*Kx istypically not an integer multiple of the codeword payload. That is,Kx*Wx−Ix>=0. In this case “Fractional Shortening to Fit Payload” orFStFP, is applied. First, Ix is padded to be an integer number of bytes.Then, a prearranged set of (Kx*Wx−Ix)/8 of the codewords are eachshortened by one additional byte. It will be appreciated that agranularity different from one byte can be used. In this context, x canbe any of p, s, t, PoSP, or PoTP.

When a read operation from the flash memory is performed by the SSD, itis a function of the ECC decoder, for example, the decoder portion of anECC encoder/decoder 1310 (FIG. 13), to detect and correct errors thatmay exist in the data read, and return the corrected data of interest toa journaling engine 1308 (FIG. 13).

FIG. 8 illustrates a procedure that can be used to recover dataincluding user data (information) 401 (FIG. 4), 501 a-501 d (FIG. 5),701 a-701 d (FIG. 7) in the presence of a relatively large bit errorrate. The reference characters will be reused from those describedearlier in connection with FIGS. 5-7, and it will be understood thatthese reference characters may refer to where the original data camefrom and can instead be copied to and processed in scratchpad memory,such as the RAM 1306 (FIG. 13), rather than in flash memory. Inaddition, in one embodiment, primary error correction can be performedbetween the reading of information from the flash memory and thetemporary storage of the information to the scratchpad memory. Otherdata can also be recovered as will be explained below. It will beappreciated by the skilled practitioner that the illustrated process canbe modified in a variety of ways. For example, in another embodiment,various portions of the illustrated process can be combined, can berearranged in an alternate sequence, can be removed, or the like. Forexample, in an alternate embodiment without secondary ECC, or withouttertiary ECC, the states and decision blocks associated with thesecondary ECC can be eliminated from the process. At the start of theprocess, it is assumed that data and various primary, secondary, andtertiary ECC has been stored to the corresponding flash page grid 600 asdescribed earlier in connection with FIGS. 4-7.

The illustrated process can begin either at a stage 801 or a stage 806.For the sake of efficiency and minimum latency, one embodiment of theprocess preferably calculates the minimum set of primary codewords (the“partial page”) for recovering the requested data operating under theassumption that secondary and tertiary decoding will not be necessary.Typically, a page will have no errors to relatively few errors that canbe corrected via decoding of primary codewords, so this assumption makesfor good efficiency and low latency for most situations. To implementthis assumption, the process starts at the stage 801 in which theprocess receives a request for user data. It will be understood that dueto journaling activities/flash translation layer activities, that theprocess may need to translate an address associated with the requesteddata with an actual address as stored in the flash memory. The processadvances from the stage 801 to a stage 802.

In the stage 802, the process reads a partial page stripe, which can beless than a page stripe depending on how much data is requested. Thepartial page stripe contains the primary codewords corresponding to therequested data. For example, if only one byte of data is requested, thena single page may hold the corresponding user data. In another example,a range of data can be requested, which can take less time to retrievefrom the page stripe than reading the entire page stripe. At least onepage from the flash memory is read. The process advances from the stage802 to a stage 803.

In the stage 803, the process performs primary error detection andcorrection, as necessary, using the primary parity on user data. Forexample, the primary codewords can be retrieved from a combination ofreading the user data 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d and the primary parity onuser data 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702 d. It will be understood that if theforegoing refers to reading a partial page stripe of the page stripes550 a, 550 b, 550 c, 640. For example, the process can use conventionalECC decoding techniques to detect and possibly correct errors in theuser data 501 a-501 d, 702 a-702 d using the primary parity on user data502 a-502 d, 702 a-702 d, but new forms of ECC decoding that are yet tobe developed may also be applicable. Of course, the decoding processshould match the encoding process. The process advances from the stage803 to the decision block 804.

In the decision block 804, the process evaluates whether the datadecoded in the stage 803 is reasonably likely to be error-free. In oneembodiment, the criterion for establishing that the data was decoded inan error-free manner with high confidence includes the following: (a)every primary codeword containing requested data is correctable; and (b)the number of bits corrected in every primary codeword containingrequested data is less than or equal to a parameter Qp (see FIG. 11) forthe current gear; and optionally (c) no primary codeword containingrequested data contains all-zeroes after correction. A codeword with allzeroes information bits and all zeroes parity is a valid BCH codeword,but it can be produced by a physical error. Thus, in one embodiment, acodeword of all zeroes is initially assumed to be erroneous. Sometimes,the actual user data to be stored will correspond to all zeroes. Todifferentiate all-zeroes user data from a physical failure, in oneembodiment, the incoming user data is passed through a scrambler priorto storage in the flash memory. Scrambling can be implemented byexclusive-ORing (XORing) a pseudo-random sequence in a known,predictable pattern with the incoming data such that long runs of onesor zeroes are avoided. The XORing is performed prior to storing the userdata and prior to calculating parity symbols. The original user data cansimply be recovered by XORing the same pseudo random sequence and therecovered (corrected) data from the flash memory.

A problem in MLC flash storage is that certain data patterns can causerapid flash wear out as well as increased error rates on other pages. Anexample of a troublesome data pattern is all ones on one page, and allzeroes on a “matching” page. In a situation in which many users havedata on a flash array, a malicious or unfortunate user could damage theflash array by deliberately storing data with these patterns, thusincreasing the risk of data loss for all users of the flash array. Thereare a number of ways of eliminating this problem. One, known in the art,is to encrypt the data before writing it to the flash. However, thecost, power, and latency impact of encryption and key management is notalways desirable. In the absence of encryption, it is known in the artthat large data patterns can be removed using a scrambler (for example,XORing the data with the output of a pseudorandom pattern generator).However, if a malicious user is able to guess the scrambler sequence,the malicious user can submit data in the form of the desired maliciouspattern XORed with the scrambler sequence, with the result that themalicious pattern is written to flash.

In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, prior to ECC paritycalculation, data to be written is XORed with the output of apseudorandom bit sequence. The initial value (seed) of the pseudorandombit sequence is determined from information available to the algorithm,but which the end user, including a malicious user, cannot know. In oneembodiment of the invention, the seed is generated by taking a digest(hash) of the physical address at which the data is to be stored. In aspecific embodiment, the seed is 16 bits, is generated separately oncefor every 536-byte scrambler or journaling “cell” of data stored by thejournaling engine, and can be generated as expressed in Eq. 14.Seed[15:0]=(block address[7:0];page address[7:0])XOR(7′b0;chip_enable[2:0];cell_num[4:0]);odd_parity  Eq. 14

In Eq. 14, “;” denotes bitwise concatenation, “7′b0” indicates sevenbits of value 0, “XOR” denotes a bitwise exclusive OR operation,cell_num is the address of the journaling cell of data within a pagestripe, and odd_parity represents a bit calculated so that there are anodd number of ones in the 16-bit vector. Table VIII illustrates thenumber of journaling cells per page stripe for each of the 4 pagestripes and 3 gears of the illustrated embodiment. The rightmost columnof Table VIII contains the total number of journaling cells per pagegrid.

TABLE VIII Total Page Stripe 0 1 2 3 (Page Grid) First Gear 30 30 30 16106 Second Gear 27 27 27 14 95 Third Gear 21 21 21 11 74

The precise allocation of bits to the seed is not particularlyimportant, so long as the seed is never zero; the seed is different formost pages; the seed is readily calculated with data that is availableeven after a sudden loss of power; and a user does not have any way ofknowing or routinely guessing the entire seed. For example, when thejournaling engine 1308 (FIG. 13) is used, the user should not be able toknow, for example, the physical page address because of the translationby the journaling engine 1308.

If the correction is performed with high confidence, process proceedsfrom the decision block 804 to a stage 805 in which the data is providedto the host and is indicated as correct. If the correction is notperformed with high confidence, then the process proceeds to the stage807 in which a page stripe is read from the flash memory to begindecoding of the page stripe. For example, any of the page stripe 550 a,the page stripe 550 b, the page stripe 550 c, or the page stripe 640 canbe decoded. In an alternative embodiment, the process can begin in thestage 806 and initiate a read of the page stripe 550 a, 550 b, 550 c,640 (FIG. 6). When this occurs, the process reads the entire page stripefirst, without an initial partial page stripe read. The process advancesfrom the stage 807 to a stage 808.

In the stage 808, each primary codeword in the page stripe is decoded toperform primary error correction for the page stripe. The stage 808 issimilar to the stage 803, except that the primary error detection andcorrection is performed over the page stripe in the stage 808. A pagestripe can be of the first type exemplified by the page stripes 550 a,550 b, 550 c or the second type exemplified by the last page stripe 640.If a page stripe happens to be of the second type exemplified by thelast page stripe 640 of the page grid 600, decoding of the primary ECCcodewords is performed on the user data 701 a-701 b with the primaryparity on user data 702 a-702 b, on the secondary parity 703 a-703 dusing the PoSP 704 a-704 d, and optionally the tertiary parity over pagegrid 705 a-705 d with the PoTP 706 a-706 d. For efficiency, the PoTP 706a-706 d need not be decoded in the stage 808 because depending on howthe page stripe decoding portion 308 of the process fares, it may not beneeded. The PoTP 706 a-706 d can be used later in the page grid decodingportion 310 of the process.

If a page stripe happens to be of the first type exemplified by the pagestripes 550 a, 550 b, 550 c of the page grid 600, then there are notertiary parity bits so decoding of the primary ECC codewords isperformed on the user data 501 a-501 b with the primary parity on userdata 502 a-502 b and on the secondary parity 503 a-503 d using the PoSP504 a-504 d. The process advances from the stage 808 to a decision block809.

In the decision block 809, the process determines whether the errorcorrection, if any, was performed with high degree of confidence thatthe error correction is without error. The criterion used in thedecision block 809 to establish the high degree of confidence caninclude the following: (a) every primary codeword is correctable; and(b) the number of bits corrected in every Primary codeword is Qp orless; and (c) previous secondary decoding was completed withoutcorrections, and with no more than one uncorrectable.

If the correction of the codewords containing requested data has beenperformed with high confidence, the process proceeds from the decisionblock 809 to a stage 830 for evaluation of a possible change in gear(strength of ECC) and then to the stage 805 in which the data isprovided to the host. See, for example, the decision blocks 1132, 1134,1136, the set next gear flag stages 1142, 1144, 1146, and the decisionblocks 1172, 1174, 1176, which will be described later in connectionwith FIG. 11. If the codewords have not been decoded with highconfidence, then the process proceeds from the decision block 809 to adecision block 810.

In the decision block 810, the process evaluates a stopping criterionand determines if an impasse has been reached. In one embodiment, astopping criterion is used to halt the iteration of the loop from thestage 808 to the stage 813 if at least one of the following is true: (a)a loop counter has reached a predetermined limit, that is, a maximumiteration limit; or (b) no new corrections were made for the stage 808in which primary decoding is performed or for the stage 812 in whichsecondary decoding is performed, or (c) the changes performed in twosuccessive executions of the stage 808 were the same. In one embodiment,the predetermined limit is 12 iterations. Other limits can be used andwill be readily determined by one of ordinary skill in the art. If animpasse has been reached, the process proceeds from the decision block810 to a stage 814 to begin decoding of a page grid. For example, thepage grid 600 can be decoded. If no impasse has been reached, theprocess proceeds from the decision block 810 to a stage 811.

In the stage 811, the corrected, but with low confidence, data (notexclusively user data) is re-interleaved into a set of secondarycodewords. The secondary codewords can correspond to, for example, theuser data 501 a-501 d (FIG. 5) and the secondary parity 503 a-503 d(FIG. 5) or to the user data 701 a-701 d (FIG. 7) and the secondaryparity 703 a-703 d (FIG. 7). The process advances from the stage 811 toa stage 812.

In the stage 812, error correction is performed on the secondarycodewords according to the particular ECC used for encoding. Thesecondary codewords can include, for example, the user data 501 a-501 d,701 a-701 d and the secondary parity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 d or theprimary parity on user data 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702 d and the secondaryparity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 d. For example, the process can utilizethe secondary parity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 d to correct the user data501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d and the primary parity 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702d. The decoding of the secondary codewords should be performedsequentially after and not in parallel with the stage 808 in whichdecoding of the primary codewords is performed. For example, in thestage 808, PoSP 504 a-504 d, 704 a-704 d is used to detect and correcterrors in the secondary parity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 d. The processadvances from the stage 812 to a stage 813.

In the stage 813, the process de-interleaves the secondary codewords andreturns the corrected data to the format or order used for decode of theprimary ECC. The process returns to the stage 808 to continue iterationof the loop.

If the page stripe stopping criterion of the decision block 810 has beenmet, the process proceeds to perform error correction on the page grid600, that is, perform the page grid decoding portion 310 of the process.The various decoding processes can be performed in hardware,software/firmware, or combinations of hardware and software/firmware.The relatively rarity of execution of the page grid decoding portion 310indicates that it can be practical to implement the partial page stripedecoding portion 304 and the page stripe decoding portion 308 inhardware, and implement the page grid decoding portion 310 insoftware/firmware. The page grid decoding portion 310 of the processdepicted in FIG. 8 proceeds along the assumption that none of the pagesof the page grid 600 have failed. A different process for page griddecoding will be described later in connection with FIG. 10 for thedecoding of a page grid 600 with a failed page. Returning now to thepage grid decoding portion 310 of the process, in the stage 814, theother page stripes or “supporting page stripes” of the page grid areread. The supporting page stripes are the other page stripes from thesame page grid 600 such that the supporting page stripes are pagestripes from which user data is not specifically requested, but yetcontain relevant secondary and/or tertiary ECC. The process advances toa stage 815.

In the stage 815, the supporting page stripes are decoded. In oneembodiment, the stage 814 and the stage 815 can be performediteratively. In the stage 815, each supporting page stripe is preferablyindividually ECC decoded at the page stripe level similar to thepreviously described page stripe decoding process described in thestages 807, 808, 811, 812, 813 and the decision blocks 809, 810. Oneembodiment of decoding a supporting page stripe process will bedescribed later in connection with FIG. 9. The process of FIG. 9 can berepeated until all the supporting page stripes have been decoded. Theprocess advances from the stage 815 to the stage 816.

In the stage 816, the process performs interleaving to rearranges theuser data 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d and tertiary ECC 705 a, 705 d intotertiary codewords. The process advances from the stage 816 to a stage817.

In the stage 817, the process performs error correction of the tertiarycodewords using the tertiary parity 705 a-705 d. For example, whenencoded according to Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, conventional techniquesfor decoding RS codes can be used. The process advances from the stage817 to a stage 818.

In the stage 818, the process returns the corrected block data of thetertiary codewords to the native format of the page grid 600 or order ofthe user data 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d, primary parity on user data 502a-502 d, secondary parity 503 a-503 d, PoSP 504 a-504 d byde-interleaving the tertiary codewords and stores them in scratchpadmemory. Of course, the original page structure need not be preciselyreproduced to recover the data, but it is convenient to explain andimplement the process is this manner. The process advances from thestage 818 to a stage 819.

In the stage 819, the process interleaves the recovered secondary parity503 a-503 d into a format convenient for secondary decoding. Theconvenient format can be to arrange the secondary parity 503 a-503 dwith other data into secondary codewords. The PoSP 504 a-504 d, 704a-704 d can also be used later during the stage 822 to detect and/orcorrect errors in the secondary parity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 d. Theprocess advances from the stage 819 to a stage 820.

In the stage 820, the process performs error correction of the secondarycodewords using the secondary parity 503 a-503 d, 703 a-703 d. Theresult of the decoding of the secondary codewords yields corrected datafor the user data 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d and primary parity on userdata 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702 d. The process advances from the stage 820to a stage 821.

In the stage 821, the corrected data is de-interleaved to return it tothe native format of the user data 501 a-501 d, 701 a-701 d and primaryparity on user data 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702 d. The process advances fromthe stage 821 to a stage 822.

In the stage 822, the process performs error correction using theprimary codewords, that is, using the data of the user data 501 a-501 d,701 a-701 d and the primary parity on user data 502 a-502 d, 702 a-702d. It should be noted that the codewords do not have to be specificallyformed but can be constructed as needed based on, for example, pointersto scratchpad memory locations. The process advances from the stage 822to a decision block 823.

In the decision block 823, the process determines whether or not theresults of the error correction in the stage 817, the stage 820, and thestage 822 were completed with a relatively high degree of confidence.The criterion used in the decision block 823 to establish the highdegree of confidence includes the following queries, which takentogether are sufficient to exit the decision block 823 with highconfidence: (a) every primary codeword is correctable; and (b) thenumber of bits corrected in every Primary codewords is Qp or less; and(c) previous secondary decoding was completed without corrections, andwith no more than one uncorrectable, and (d) previous tertiary decodingwas completed without uncorrectable codewords being detected. In somecases, such as for very high values of Qp, it may be acceptable torelease the data without (c) or (d) being true.

If the process determines that a high confidence of a correct decodingoperation has been achieved, then the process proceeds from the decisionblock 823 to a stage 832 to set the next gear flag (see the next gearflag indication 1142, 1144, 1146, FIG. 11) and then to the stage 805 torelease the requested data. In an alternative embodiment, the stage 832to set the next ear flag is unconditionally performed when the page griddecoding portion 310 of the process is invoked. If the error correctionhas not been performed with high confidence, then the process proceedsfrom the decision block 823 to a decision block 824.

In the decision block 824, the process evaluates a stopping criterionand determines if an impasse has been reached. In one embodiment, astopping criterion is used to halt the iteration of the loop from thestage 816 to the stage 822 if at least one of the following is true: (a)a loop counter has reached a predetermined limit, that is, a maximumiteration limit; (b) no new corrections were made for any of the stages817, 820, 822 in which tertiary, secondary, or primary decoding isperformed; or (c) two successive iterations of stage 822 were identical.In one embodiment, the predetermined limit is 12 iterations. Otherlimits can be used and will be readily determined by one of ordinaryskill in the art. If an impasse has been reached, the process proceedsfrom the decision block 824 to a stage 825 to attempt page failurerecovery. One embodiment of the stage 825 will be described in greaterdetail later in connection with FIG. 10. If no impasse has been reached,the process returns from the decision block 824 to the stage 816 toproceed with another iteration of tertiary decoding.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of decoding a supporting page stripeaccording to an embodiment of the invention. FIG. 9 shows greater detailof the stage 815 described earlier in connection with FIG. 8. Thesupporting page stripes of a page grid 600 are the page stripes of thepage grid 600 that do not contain the data requested in the stage 801 orin the stage 806. However, the supporting page stripes are of the pagegrid 600 that does contain the data requested in the stage 801 or in thestage 806. The process 900 is similar to that of the page stripedecoding process represented by a dashed block 308 (FIG. 8), except thatthe data is not released as it would be in the stage 805 (FIG. 8).Instead, the data can be temporarily stored in the scratchpad memory forlater use by the stage 816 (FIG. 8).

In the stage 902, each of the supporting page stripes in the page grid600 is read from the flash memory in a manner similar to that of thestage 807 (FIG. 8). In the stage 903, primary error correction isperformed similar to that of the stage 808 (FIG. 8). For the last pagestripe, the stage 903 also includes decoding of the primary codewordsthat cover the tertiary parity bits 705 a-705 d. In the decision block904, the criteria used to determine if the page stripe decoding has beensuccessful or not can be the same as that used in the decision block 809(FIG. 8). In the decision block 905, the criterion used to determine iffurther decode is futile or not can be the same as that used in thedecision block 810 (FIG. 8). If not futile, then the data isre-interleaved in the stage 906 into a set of secondary codewords in amanner similar to that performed in the stage 811 (FIG. 8). Errorcorrection is performed on the secondary codewords according in thestage 907 in a manner similar to that of the stage 812 (FIG. 8). Aftererror correction, in a stage 908, the process de-interleaves the data tothe format used for primary decode in a manner similar to that of thestage 813 (FIG. 8). The process flow returns from the stage 908 to thestage 903.

When the decode operation is determined to have been successful in thedecision block 904 or futile in the decision block 905, then the datafor the page stripe is stored in the stage 909 for page grid decoding.

The page stripe decoding process 900 can be repeated for the remainingsupporting page stripes of the page grid. When the process has reachedthe stage 909 for all supporting page stripes, then the stage 815 (FIG.8) is complete, and the decoded page stripes are passed to the stage 816as described earlier in connection with FIG. 8.

If iterative decoding including primary, secondary, and tertiarydecoding have failed, it is possible that the reason for the failure isthe total failure of a flash page within the grid. This failure may bethe result of the total failure of a flash die, or of part of a die(such as a plane, block, or page), or simply a very high BER on onepage. In one embodiment, the pages of a page grid 600 are organized suchthat the page grid 600 contains only one page from a given die, so thateven if a die failure occurs, the die failure affects only one page oneach page grid 600.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of a process for attempting a pagefailure recovery. It will be appreciated by the skilled practitionerthat the illustrated process can be modified in a variety of ways. Forexample, in another embodiment, various portions of the illustratedprocess can be combined, can be rearranged in an alternate sequence, canbe removed, or the like. The process is illustrated using primary,secondary, and tertiary error correction. As discussed earlier, primaryerror correction provides error correction for a page 400, secondaryerror correction provides error correction for a page stripe 550, 640,and tertiary error correction provides error correction for a page grid600. Since the failure of a page can be a relatively rare event ascompared to the correction of errors within pages or page stripes, it ispractical to implement the tertiary decoding in firmware/software withinstructions executed by a processor, or in a block of hardware sharedby several decoders.

While illustrated in the context of an SSD controller using primary,secondary, and tertiary error correction, the principles and advantagesdescribed herein are also applicable to systems using fewer errorcorrection levels or even more error correction levels. For example, inan alternative embodiment, the secondary error correction and pagestripe arrangement are not utilized and rather, the tertiary errorcorrection is used with the primary error correction and the states inthe dashed box 1030 are not used and can thus be considered optional. Insuch an alternative configuration, the page grid will then contain acollection of pages or integer fractions of pages rather than acollection of page stripes. In another alternative arrangement, tertiaryparity bits can be distributed among the pages of a page grid in amanner similar to that of the last page stripe 640 (FIG. 7).

Returning now to the process depicted in FIG. 10, at the start of theprocess, it is assumed that, data has been stored to the flash memoryand that the process described earlier in connection with FIG. 8 has notresulted in recovered data and has ended in the stage 825. Since theprocess of FIG. 8 has failed to recover data, the possibility isrelatively high that there is a failed page in the page grid 600. Thefailed page will usually be the page for which data is being requested,but can also be another page of the page grid that is needed to completeerror correction decoding for the requested page. When a failed page ofthe page grid 600 can be identified, the error correction capability forthe page grid can be dramatically improved. As discussed earlier inconnection with the stages 216-220 of FIG. 2, in one embodiment, aReed-Solomon (RS) code is used for the tertiary error correction. A RScode is both an error correction code and an erasure code.

When correcting errors with RS codes and certain other codes, there is adifference in the ability of the RS ECC decoder to correct errors whenthe location of the errors is known. For example, an RS ECC decoder cantypically correct twice as many erasures than it can correct errors ofunknown location because there is information in the location of theerrors. As discussed earlier in connection with FIG. 2, in one examplein which the tertiary symbol size Mt is 8 bits or one byte, tertiarycodeword size Nt is 250 bytes, block data size Kt is 226 Bytes, and eachtertiary codeword can correct up to 12 symbol errors, up to 24 erasures,or some mix thereof such that the number of erasures plus twice thenumber of symbol errors is equal to 24. Thus, for example, when blindlycorrecting errors such as in the page grid decoding portion 310 of theprocess of FIG. 8, the RS ECC decoder is correcting errors of unknownlocation because the RS ECC decoder does not know which symbols needcorrection. However, if portions of the data to be corrected can beidentified or marked as unknowns or erasures, the RS ECC decoder canthen correct more errors than previously done in the page grid decodingportion 310 of the process of FIG. 8, thereby recovering a failed page.While illustrated in connection with RS codes, the above-describedprinciple applies to other erasure codes as well, such as to LDPC codes.Additionally, it should be noted that an RS ECC is applicable to symbolsand not to individual bits. Typically, each symbol of an RS ECC is abyte (8 bits) of data, but the symbols can be other than bytes. Inaddition, the process can temporarily store data in scratchpad memory,such as in the RAM 1306 (FIG. 13) and can further rearrange the data asneeded. In one embodiment, the process copies data from the page grid600 (FIG. 6) to the RAM 1306 and performs the page recovery processingdescribed in connection with FIG. 10 using the contents copied over tothe RAM 1306.

The process of FIG. 10 starts in a stage 1001. As described earlier inconnection with the fingerprints 407 of FIG. 4, the fingerprints 507a-507 d, 707 a-707 d stored for each page can be determined from thephysical address of the flash location of that page. For example, a hashcode based on the physical address can be used for the fingerprints. Thephysical address of the page will be known to the SSD controller.Accordingly, the correct or expected values for the fingerprints 507a-507 d, 707 a-707 d is known or is at least determinable prior to dataretrieval. In the stage 1001, the process compares the retrieved valuefor the fingerprints 507 a-507 d, 707 a-707 d on each page to itsoriginal value. In one embodiment, the page of the page grid 600 havingthe retrieved fingerprint with the largest magnitude difference from theexpected value is identified as the failed page, so long as thatdifference is greater than a predetermined threshold, such as 5 bits. Ifthis fingerprint comparison is unable to determine a unique failed page,then in one embodiment, the page with the most primary codeword failurescan be identified as the failed page. The comparison of primary codewordfailures can also be used as a tiebreaker if the fingerprint differencesare equal.

The method is intended to detect many different kinds of failure. Forexample, an address line can fail, which can result in data from thewrong address being returned. Other forms of failure might return fixedbyte patterns (such as all-ones), totally random data, or simply a veryhigh bit error rate. Also, note that the page identified as havingfailed does not have to be the particular page of the page grid 600 fromwhich data is requested. Alternate forms of identifying a bad page canalso be applicable. For example, in another embodiment, a brute forceprocedure is used and the corresponding data from various pages of thepage grid 600 are successively erased for error correction. However, thebrute force technique would typically be quite time consuming toexecute. The process advances from the stage 1001 to a stage 1016 a.

In the stage 1016 a, the tertiary codewords with the erasures can bere-interleaved substantially as described earlier in connection with thestage 816 (FIG. 8). The process advances from the stage 1016 a to astage 1002.

In the stage 1002, the process marks as an erasure or as an unknown, thesymbols of the tertiary codewords that are based at least partly on thefailed page. In the illustrated embodiment, each symbol is a byte ofdata, but other symbol sizes can be used. In the illustrated embodiment,the tertiary codewords are interleaved so that the contents of each pageare evenly distributed among the tertiary codewords of a grid. The SSDcontroller will be aware of the particular pattern used for interleavingbits for the various codewords. With knowledge of the pattern, the SSDcontroller determines which of the symbols making up the tertiarycodewords are based on data stored in the failed page. These identifiedsymbols are then marked as unknowns or erasures by the SSD controllerfor decoding such that for a given tertiary codeword, each symbol, forexample, in one embodiment, each byte of a Reed-Solomon ECC defined overGalois Field (GF)(2^8 or 2⁸), coming from the failed page is marked asan erasure for the RS ECC decoder. This marking as an erasure cancorrespond to an instruction to the RS ECC decoder identifying theerased symbols. It should be noted that erasure in this context does notrefer to the erasure of a block of flash memory. The process advancesfrom the stage 1002 to a stage 1017.

In the stage 1017, the process performs tertiary error correction oneach tertiary codeword, treating each “erasure” or unknown byte as anassumed error location to perform mixed error and erasure decoding;otherwise 1017 is substantially as described earlier in connection withthe stage 817 (FIG. 8). The process advances from the stage 1017 to astage 1018 in which the process de-interleaves the tertiary codewords toreturn the now corrected block data to the native format of the pagegrid 600 substantially as described earlier in connection with the stage818 (FIG. 8). The result of the performance of the stages 1016 a, 1017,1018 can differ from that of the stages 816, 817, 818 because the databeing corrected is different due to the erasure of the symbols of thefailed page performed in the stage 1002. The process advances from thestage 1018 to a stage 1019.

In the stages 1019, 1020, 1021, the process performs page stripedecoding for the page grid with the secondary error correctionsubstantially as described earlier in connection with the stages 819,820, 821 of FIG. 8. If the outcome of the stage 1017 was improvedcompared with the stage 817, then the secondary decoding can be expectedto perform better than in the process of FIG. 8. The process advancesfrom the stage 1021 to a stage 1022. In the stage 1022, the processperforms primary error correction substantially as described earlier inconnection with the stage 822 of FIG. 8. The process advances from thestage 1022 to a decision block 1023.

In the decision block 1023, the process evaluates the results of theprimary, secondary, and tertiary decoding operations. If the releasecriteria for the decision block 823 are met, or if all of the followingare true: (a) the maximum number of iterations has been reached, such as12 iterations, (b) the primary decoding has no uncorrectable errors, and(c) the tertiary decoding has no uncorrectable errors. If releasecriteria are met, the decoding process is complete, and the processproceeds from the decision block 1023 to a stage 1033 in which the datais released.

If the correction has not been performed with high confidence and datashould not be released, then the process proceeds from the decisionblock 1023 to a decision block 1024 to evaluate a stopping criterion. Inone embodiment, the stopping criterion is the same as for the decisionblock 824. If the stopping criterion is not satisfied, another iterationof the loop is initiated, with the process proceeds from the decisionblock 1024 to the stage 1016 b to perform tertiary error correctionwithout taking erasures into account. With additional symbols correctedfrom secondary and primary error correction, a subsequent tertiary errorcorrection can be more successful than an initial or an earlier pass. Inthe stage 1016 b, the at least partially corrected tertiary codewordscan be re-interleaved substantially as described earlier in connectionwith the stage 816 (FIG. 8).

The process proceeds from the decision block 1024 to an optionaldecision block 1032, which determines whether or not the stoppingcriterion of the decision block 1024 had been satisfied for the firsttime or the second time for the page grid. If the stopping criterion hadbeen reached for only the first time, the symbols of the failed page areconsidered to be unknown a second time and the process optionallyreturns from the decision block 1032 to the stage 1016 a to execute asecond time. Iteration counters are also set back to zero except for thestopping criterion of the decision block 1024. The reason for performingthe optional second execution, which appears to perform an apparentlyidentical process, is that the primary and secondary correction stepsmay have cleaned up random errors to a sufficient extent that a seconderasure pass can fix the remaining problems. The second pass also tendsto eliminate problems arising from Tertiary false-corrections occurringduring the first execution of 1002 and 1017.

If, on the other hand, the stopping criterion has been satisfied for asecond time, then the decoding operation has been a failure and theprocess proceeds from the decision block 1032 to a stage 1034 in which aread response indicating an uncorrectable block is returned to the host.Further attempts to repeat can be attempted, but the number of attemptsshould be limited to avoid an infinite loop.

Flash page failures can take many forms. The data may be returned in theform of all-zeroes or all-ones. The data can be totally random. The datamay also, due to an address decoder failure, be data from the wrongpage.

In at least two of these cases (all-zeroes and data from the wrong page)the primary codewords are likely to indicate that the data iscorrectable. A rule of the decision block 804 forbidding quick releaseof an all-zeroes codeword is intended to avoid mistaking an all-zeroespage due to a flash failure for a correct page. An all-zeroes codewordcan have an all zeroes checksum such that failure of the page can bedifficult to detect. The likelihood of a genuine all-zeroes codeword canbe minimized through the use of a scrambler as discussed earlier inconnection with the decision block 804 of FIG. 8.

Adaptive ECC

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of flash page ECC gear progression. AnECC gear is selected upon initialization and upon use. FIG. 11illustrates gear progression for both scenarios, which can be consideredtwo separate processes. The processes can be performed by the SSDcontroller 1300 (FIG. 13). It will be appreciated by the skilledpractitioner that the illustrated process can be modified in a varietyof ways. For example, in another embodiment, various portions of theillustrated process can be combined, can be rearranged in an alternatesequence, can be removed, or the like. In the illustrated example, threelevels (gears) of ECC capability are used. In the illustratedembodiment, each gear or strength level has a different ratio R ofinformation bits K to total bits N. In alternative embodiments, twolevels are used or more than three levels are used. A set of criteriaassociated with the gear can be used to select the next gear or toretire a page, a page stripe, or a page grid. Advantageously, theretiring of a page, a page stripe, or a page grid can correspond to arelatively small amount of memory that is retired at a time and can beused to retire, for example, upper pages earlier than lower pages,rather than entire blocks of pages. In one embodiment, the next gear isselected if more than gx_thresh=Gx*stripe_size bits were correctedduring a decode of a page stripe, or if more than a predetermined numbergx_iter_thresh iterations of primary error correction and secondaryerror correction were required for a successful decode at the pagestripe decoding portion 308 of the process. In one embodiment,stripe_size=4320*8*4=138240 bits, G1 is 1.3E-3, and thus g1_thresh=180bits; g1_iter_thresh=3.

In an alternate embodiment, the gear progression can include a change ofan ECC type to increase the ECC strength instead of or in addition to achange in the ratio R. For example, ECC type can include, but are notlimited to: Hamming codes, BCH codes, Reed-Solomon codes, LDPC codes,Hadamard codes, Expander codes, Golay codes, and Reed-Muller codes. Forexample, the type of ECC can be changed from a Hamming code to a BCHcode to implement a gear change. The change in type can also beaccompanied by a change in ratio R. Preferably, when a next ECCtechnique is selected for a gear change, whether implemented by having alower ratio R and/or a change in type of type, the next ECC techniqueuses the least overhead, for example, the least number of parity bits ofthe ECC techniques having a corrective capacity within the RBER observedfor the page stripe.

In addition, extra safety margin can be provided by generation of asafety factor that covers expected variations in RBER. The memorytesting techniques can be imperfect and the memory cells themselves arebe subject to variability; furthermore error rates can increase if datais retained in the flash for a long period. For example, at theproduction level, the characteristics of the flash memory cells can betested to see how much the RBER varies among the page stripes and amonga sample of SSDs with memory cells of the same type. The observed RBERcan be compared against historical RBER including, for example, theworst-case RBER Bworst ever observed on that page or group of pages. An“excursion factor Ex” can be calculated based on a cumulativeprobability density function analysis of the comparison data tocompensate for the variability. Ex is chosen such that the probabilityof observing an RBER>Bworst is less than aUBER. The excursion factor Exis then multiplied by a “retention factor” RETx sufficient to accountfor increased BER over the desired retention period, to get the safetyfactor SFx. The safety factor is always greater than or equal to 1. Thesafety factor is used to determine the operational RBER limits for eachgear. For example, operational RBER limits G1, G2, G3, for three gearscan be selected by dividing the theoretical ECC RBER (ECC_CAP) at whichUBER<1E-16 is achieved in each gear by the safety factor. ThusGx≦ECC_CAPx/SFx=ECC_CAPx/(Ex*RETx), wherein Gx is one of G1, G2, or G3.A safety factor is typically calculated during system test and can beprogrammed into the SSD controller 1300 or into other non-volatilememory or can, for example, be programmed into the threshold limits. Thesafety factor SFx, the excursion factor Ex, and the retention factorRETx, can vary in a very broad range based on the flash used and theoperational conditions the SSD is required to withstand. Non-limitingexamples of values for the safety factor SFx include about 2.5, a rangeof 2 to 3, and a range of 1.5 to 4 for a page grid, an excursion factorEx range of about 4-8 for a page, a range of about 2 to 3 for a pagestripe, a range of about 1.4-1.8 for a page grid, and a retention factorRETx range of about 1.2 to 2.2. Other values are applicable and will bereadily determined by one of ordinary skill in the art. The value Gx maybe chosen smaller than ECC_CAPx ISFx for other reasons, such as toensure a sufficiently high probability of quick-release.

Another way of describing the use of the safety factor is that the gearshould be selected based on an estimate of the future RBER that willexist when the region of flash is decoded. The safety factor accountsfor the uncertainties inherent in that estimate, including retentiontime, variability of the flash medium, and inaccuracies in measurement.

The process can maintain one or more tables that maintain the selectedgears of the page stripes. The table(s) can be stored in DRAM orscratchpad memory. The table(s) or bins can alternatively be stored inother memory, such as within the flash array itself, or other flashmemory within or external to a chip embodying the SSD controller 1300(FIG. 13). The processing of assigning page stripes or other groupingsor one or more pages to a particular amount of ECC gearing can bereferred to as “binning” In one embodiment, a first table 1102 maintainsa list of page stripes that are available, that is, are erased, and havepages and page stripes associated with the first gear of ECC. The listcan store a reference to the applicable page stripes, such as, but notlimited to, upper address bits of the page stripe. A second table 1104maintains a list of page stripes that are available and associated witha second gear of ECC. A third table 1106 maintains a list of pagestripes that are available and associated with a third gear of ECC. Afourth table 1108 maintains a list of unusable or bad page stripes.

The payload capacity of a page stripe can be large enough to holdmultiple allocation blocks. As discussed previously, in the illustratedembodiment, the payload capacity of a page stripe depends on the gearlevel and the type of page stripe. In one embodiment, the processtemporarily holds, such as in scratchpad RAM 1306, until there is enoughdata to fill the page stripe to be programmed or “current” page stripe,and then the process programs the current page stripe with theparticular gear level as indicated by the stages 1111, 1113, 1115. Inaddition, an allocation block can also be programmed into portions oftwo different page stripes, such as, a first subset of the allocationblock can be programmed at the end of one page stripe and a secondsubset of the allocation block can be programmed to the beginning ofanother page stripe. Much of the time, however, the entire allocationblock can be programmed into a single page stripe. It should be notedthat a subset can include the whole. The mapping of particularallocation blocks to page stripes is handled by the journaling engine1308, which will be discussed later in connection with FIG. 12.

A fifth table 1112 maintains a list of page stripes holding data and areassociated with the first gear. A sixth table 1114 maintains a list ofpage stripes holding data and are associated with the second gear. Aseventh table 1116 maintains a list of page stripes holding data and areassociated with the third gear. In an alternative embodiment, the dataof the tables 1102, 1104, 1106, 1108, 1112, 1114, 1116 can be mergedinto fewer tables. In the illustrated embodiment, since a page stripeand the pages of the page stripe change gears at the same time, aseparate table to track the gear of a page is not needed. However, inalternate embodiments with different gears for pages and theircorresponding page stripe, additional tables can be used.

While the primary, secondary, and tertiary ECC features describedearlier in connection with FIGS. 3-10 can be used with a non-varyingstrength of error correction, preferably, the SSD controller can varythe ECC strength to accommodate different quality levels of underlyingflash memory, to compensate for wearing out from erase cycles over time,to compensate for the difference in RBER based on page index, and thelike. The gears for the four page stripes of a grid do not need to bethe same. In one embodiment, a process performed by the SSD controllerallocates to each page stripe a particular gear (ECC strength) thatwill, with relatively high certainty (for example, no more than onefailure in 1E16 reads), correct all errors that should arise during thatprogram/erase cycle. In the illustrated embodiment, a page stripe canhave 1 of 3 ECC levels for its primary and secondary ECC, but thetertiary ECC level is always maintained the same, to ease implementationof cases in which the four page stripes of a page grid have differentgears or ECC levels. In an alternative embodiment, the tertiary ECClevel or gear can be determined by the page stripe of the page grid withthe highest gear. In the illustrated embodiment, the ECCs gears arechanged on a page stripe basis, such that the secondary ECC and theprimary ECC strengths are changed at the same time. However, inalternative embodiments, a stripe can be just one page, or gearsassigning different ECC strengths to individual pages within a stripecan be defined. In the terminology used in the following, first geardenotes the smallest amount of ECC strength (highest ratio R), secondgear denotes an intermediate amount of ECC strength, and third geardenotes the largest amount of ECC strength. Of course, the number ofgears can vary in a very broad range and can generally be 2 or more.

In a stage 1110, the process initializes or formats the array, that is,all the memory devices of the SSD. The initialization is typicallyexecuted during production test when the flash memory cells are fresh,but can also be executed by an end user to return the SSD controller1300 (FIG. 13) to its factory configuration after the flash memory cellshave experienced wear. When the flash array is initialized, a memorytest is performed such that test data is written to the page stripes ofthe flash array, and then read back. For example, an example of a memorytest is a pattern resulting from scrambling all zeroes using asynchronous scrambler or the output of a pseudo random bit sequence(PRBS) 31 generator. However, any of a variety of test patterns can beused as will be recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art, and thescrambler can be disabled as appropriate for the memory test. After thememory test is performed, the particular raw bit error rate (RBER) orassociated error metric should be known. In the illustrated embodiment,the RBER is determined and maintained at a page stripe level, but inalternative embodiments in which page stripes are not present, the RBERcan be maintained at the page grid level.

An appropriate amount of strength of ECC for a page stripe is selectedbased on the RBER of the page stripe. The RBER of each page stripe iscompared against thresholds chosen for each gear. Page stripes with anRBER less than or equal to the 1st gear threshold G1 are assigned thefirst gear ECC strength and listed in the first table 1102. Page stripeswith an RBER greater than the first gear threshold G1 and less than orequal to the second gear threshold G2 are assigned to the 2nd Gear ECCstrength and listed in the second table 1104. Page stripes with an RBERgreater than the second gear threshold G2 and less than or equal to thethird gear threshold G3 are assigned to 3rd Gear ECC strength and listedin the third table 1106. Page stripes with an RBER greater than thethreshold G3 are considered unusable and listed in the fourth table1108. The gear setting for each page stripe can be maintained by thejournaling engine 1308 (FIG. 13) in memory, such as in DRAM. If thisinformation is lost, the gear ratio can be deduced by attempting adecode operation with each gear, in sequence, starting with the highestgear, until a correct decode is achieved.

Each gear has a different ratio R, and with a fixed physical page sizes,thus corresponds to varying amounts of user data that can be stored perphysical page. Ordinarily, a change in page size cannot be tolerated bythe host because the host expects to transfer data to and from a datastorage device in fixed-size storage blocks. However, by utilizing thejournaling engine 1308, the host is not aware of the variation in theamount of information data that can be stored in the underlying physicalpages as the characteristics of the physical pages are abstracted awayby the journaling engine 1308 or flash translation layer. When thejournaling engine 1308 is writing data, it selects a page stripe fromits pool of empty flash regions as indicated in the tables 1102, 1104,1106 and looks up the gear setting for that page stripe, which can beassociated implicitly per table 1102, 1104, 1106, or stored separatelyin a table in nonvolatile memory. Based on the gear setting, thejournaling engine 1308 instructs the ECC encoder to encode according tothe current gear, passes an amount of data that fits in the informationportion of the page stripe to write data 1122, 1124, 1126. Thejournaling engine 1308 can also remove a reference to the selected pagestripe from the tables 1102, 1104, 1106 listing availability and place areference to the page stripe into the appropriate one of the tables1112, 1114, 1116. The reference can be, but is not limited to, upperaddress bits (most significant bits). When the number of user sectors orallocation blocks that fit in a page stripe is not an integer, thejournaling engine handles splitting the user sector among two pagestripes. The tables 1102,1104,1106, 1112, 1114, 1116 need not literallyexist; it is usually more convenient to store information related topage stripes in a way that can be indexed by fill status, physicaladdress and/or age, and to store the gear setting as a field in an entrycorresponding to that page stripe.

In one example of a flash translation layer (FTL) implementation, theFTL or equivalent maintains two lists. One of these lists, analogous tothe first table 1102, is for in-service flash regions that can beguaranteed correctable by ECC and another list, analogous to the fourthtable 1108, is for retired regions. An overprovisioning factor u can beexpressed as u=(fc−dc)/fc, wherein fc is the payload capacity ofin-service flash regions, and dc is the drive capacity made available tothe user. In the presence of random writes, a write amplification factorwa=user_bytes_written/flash_bytes_written is proportional to 1/(2u=u^2).As regions of the flash memory are retired, fc is reduced by thecapacity of the regions retired. This in turn causes overprovisioning uto fall, which causes the write amplification factor wa to rise. Therise in wa impacts the drive's write throughput capacity, and increasesthe rate of wear. As a result, it is advantageous to take an SSD out ofservice after wa reaches a critical level. In one embodiment, themaximum wa permissible is 4.

Advantageously, one embodiment of the invention maintains a plurality oflists 1102, 1104, 1106 of flash regions associated with different gearsas well as the list 1108 of retired regions. In one embodiment, theseflash regions correspond to page stripes. When a region of flash ismoved from one gear to the next, only a fraction of its former capacityis lost. In one embodiment, the transition from 1st gear to 2nd gearreduces the region's capacity by 10%, the 2nd gear to 3rd geartransition reduces it by a further 20%, and the 3rd gear to retiredtransition reduces it by the remaining 70%. When this method isemployed, the decrease in fc due to increasing flash RBER is greatlyslowed, which in turn delays the decline of overprovisioning u, anddecreases the increase in write amplification wa. The result is a degreeof life extension (as measured in total user bytes written) far inexcess of a system that simply uses a high-strength ECC equivalent to3rd gear throughout the life of the system. This aspect of the inventioncan only be achieved by a flexible-rate ECC engine working in tandemwith a flexible-payload-size journaling engine.

Whenever a read occurs, the ECC encoder/decoder 1310 performs ECCdecoding 1122, 1124, 1126 to perform error detection and correction asneeded as previously described. As it does so, the ECC encoder/decoder1310 can count how many corrections, if any, it makes. This count can bea good approximation of the number of errors and related to a bit errorrate (BER) actually existing in the page stripe. The ECC encoder/decoder1310 compares this amount to the threshold for the current gear. In thedecision blocks 1132, 1134, 1136, if the number of corrected bits for apage stripe read exceeds the gx_thresh for the current gear, or if thenumber of primary/secondary iterations exceeds g_iter_thesh, the ECCencoder/decoder 1310 informs the journaling engine 1308 that the pagestripe should be assigned a higher gear, such as the next higher gear,the next time the page stripe is programmed. The journaling engine 1308initially stores this set next gear flag indication 1142, 1144, 1146 forlater use. If the condition for the decision blocks 1132, 1134, 1136 isnot met, there is no change made to the next gear flag 1152, 1154, 1156.

A flash block is the smallest physical unit that is erasable in flashmemory. In an embodiment of the invention, the journaling engine 1308will consider the smallest erasable unit to be one or more block grids(a set of flash blocks containing only complete page grids). Forexample, if grids are constructed of 16 pages, one from each of 16 dies,then a block grid would be 16 blocks, one from each of 16 dies,containing those page grids. When the journaling engine 1308 erases1162, 1164, 1166 a block grid of flash, the journaling engine 1308reviews the flags for the corresponding pages of that block in thedecision blocks 1172, 1174, 1176. Any page stripes which have the BERflag set are assigned the next higher gear by listing in the appropriatetable 1104, 1106, or, in the case of a page stripe already assigned tothe third gear, are marked as unusable or listed in the fourth table1108. Page stripes without the next gear flag set remain in the presentgear and are listed in the appropriate table 1102, 1104, 1106.Preferably, the decision blocks 1132, 1134, 1136 and the decision blocks1172, 1174, 1176 are executed each time they are encountered duringexecution of the process of FIG. 11. However, the execution of thedecision blocks can be skipped, for example, executed every other pass,every fourth pass, or the like. This can be useful when the process isimplemented in firmware and processor resources are low.

In an alternative embodiment, the SSD controller 1300 does not use atest pattern generator during initialization but counts corrected errorsinstead to determine the RBER. Rather than using a test pattern andtabulating errors by comparing the written data and the read data forthe memory test, the SSD controller 1300 can instead use virtually anydata, such as all zeroes or all ones, which are then scrambled by thescrambler, then encoded at the maximum strength or highest gear ECC,such as third gear, programs the encoded data, reads the encoded databack, and then decodes the retrieve data as the memory test. The maximumstrength ECC should be used since it should have the maximum errorcounting ability. During decoding, the ECC encoder/decoder 1310 countsand correct the errors encountered, if any. The count of the errors isthen used to “bin” the page stripe in the appropriate one of the tables1102, 1104, 1106, 1108 a based on the thresholds discussed earlier inconnection with the decision blocks 1132, 1134, 1136.

FIG. 12 illustrates the operation of the virtual/physical translationtable, which is used by the journaling engine 1308 of FIG. 13, whichwill be described in greater detail later.

Whenever a host wishes to write data to a storage array, the hostsupplies the data in a fixed-size allocation block along with a virtualaddress 1201 that identifies that piece of data to the host. Thejournaling engine 1308 finds an empty region for a write location 1202to the storage array, and issues commands for the data to be written tothat area. The journaling engine 1308 updates the virtual to physicaltranslation table 1204 with the physical address or addresses 1207corresponding to the virtual address 1201. If the virtual address waspreviously mapped to a physical address in a full block 1203, thatphysical address is marked as “invalid.” The pointer to the next validwrite location 1202 is advanced. When the pointer reaches the end of thecurrent block grid, the pointer is advanced to the next block grid 1205.The journaling engine 1308 maintains a supply of available blocks 1206by erasing and reclaiming blocks as will be described in greater detaillater in connection with FIG. 16.

FIG. 14 illustrates a process that the journaling engine 1308 canperform to execute write requests. Whenever a host or other processwishes to write data to a storage array, it supplies the data in afixed-size allocation block along with a virtual address or logicaladdress 1201 that identifies that piece of data, such as a block stripe,which is made up of the blocks that correspond to a page stripe, to thathost. These writes are added to a write command queue 1401. Thejournaling engine takes write requests 1402 from the write command queue1401. The journaling engine 1308 maintains a current page stripe buffer1413 it is journaling into, as well as a next page stripe buffer 1414.The payload capacity of each depends on the gear, which is specified inthe page stripe record 1415. Typically, the payload capacity of a pagestripe will be much larger than the size of an allocation block, so thatseveral allocation blocks can be written into a page stripe buffer. Atthe stage 1403, the journaling engine temporarily stores the allocationblock in the current page stripe buffer 1413, which can be implementedin volatile memory, such as RAM. If the allocation block runs over theend of the page stripe payload, the remaining portion can be assigned tothe next available page stripe and temporarily stored in the nextavailable page stripe buffer 1414. The journaling engine records thephysical location or locations of the data in the virtual (logical) tophysical translation table 1204. If the current page stripe isconsidered to be full 1405, then in a stage 1406 the journaling engineissues a command 202 to the ECC to encode and write the current pagestripe to the flash array. It will be understood that the payloadportion of a current page stripe can be considered to be full when it isless than full. For example, if the payload portion of current pagestripe is nearly full, such as within a few bytes of being full, theperformance of the memory will be improved by not splitting a nextallocation block across two different page stripes. In addition, whenjournaling cells are used, it can be desirable not to split a journalingcell across multiple page stripes. Accordingly, there can be a remainingportion of a page stripe that goes unused when it is considered to befull. In a stage 1407, the process moves the record of the current pagestripe into the list of full page stripes within the list of full blockgrids 1411. In a stage 1408, the next page stripe buffer 1414 becomesthe current page stripe buffer 1413, and a new next page stripe 1414 ischosen from the list of available block grids 1412. Once the stage 1409is reached, the write request is complete.

During writes, the journaling engine 1308 also checks in the stage 1404to see if there is existing data in the storage array corresponding tothe virtual address being overwritten by the operation. If so, it marksthe physical address for the previous data as “invalid,” as flash cannotbe overwritten.

FIG. 15 illustrates a process that the journaling engine 1308 canperform to execute read requests. Whenever data stored in a flash arrayis to be read, the host or requesting process supplies the virtualaddress 1201 for the data it wishes to retrieve. The request enters aread command queue 1501. For each read request 1502 drawn from thequeue, in a stage 1503, the journaling engine looks up the correspondingphysical address in the logical to physical translation table 1204, andissues commands 302 (FIG. 3) to the ECC encoder/decoder 1310 for thedata at the physical address to be read. The output of the readprocedure in FIG. 3 is either a corrected read response 306 or anuncorrectable 314. An uncorrectable is a serious failure, and requiresexception handling 1504 that is beyond the scope of this disclosure. Ifa corrected read response 306 is returned, then if the criteria forchoosing a higher gear 1505 were met, then a flag is set in the pagestripe record 1511 in the list of full page stripes within the list offull page stripes 1411. In a stage 1507, the requested data is returnedto the requesting process.

Alternatively, a process can request the read of an entire page stripe,rather than an allocation block. In this case the request enters a queue1509. Stripe read requests 1510 already have the physical addressidentified, and proceed immediately to a read request 302.

In one embodiment, the reading of an allocation block (a partial pagestripe) may be small enough that random variation in the measured biterror rate is undesirably large, resulting in an excessive level of“false positives” indicating gear changes at stage 1505, when such gearchanges are not required. In this embodiment, BER readings of partialpage reads can be ignored, or very high thresholds applied such that thefalse positive rate is sufficiently low, for example 1E-6. In oneembodiment, when a block grid is to be erased, every page stripe is readback whether or not the page stripe contains valid data, and thestatistics of the entire page stripe be used in determining whether adifferent gear needs to be selected.

In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, the gear settingof each page stripe within a page grid is forced to be identical, suchthat the gear setting is based on the performance of the worst pagestripe of a page grid.

FIG. 16 illustrates a process that the journaling engine can perform toreclaim regions of flash, making them available for writing. Reclamationcommands 1601 can be part of garbage collection, scrubbing, and theprocess performed to maintain the list of available block grids 1412,1206. In a stage 1602, the journaling engine chooses a block grid toreclaim 1612 from a list 1411 of full block grids. In one embodiment,the block grid chosen for reclamation can be the least recently erasedblock grid. A page stripe of the block grid is read in a stage 1603 byissuing commands to a stripe read command queue 1509. When thecorresponding read response 1507 comes back, the valid allocation blocksstored in the stripe are extracted 1604 and written 1605 back to a flasharray via the write command queue 1401. Valid allocation blocks that runover into the next page stripe may be only partially present. Suchpartial valid allocation blocks are retained in a stage 1606, and arereturned to the stage 1604 to be added to the beginning of the next pagestripe. A stage 1607 evaluates whether all the page stripes in the blockgrid have been processed. If not, the process returns to the stage 1603to handle a subsequent page stripe. If so, then in a stage 1608,commands are generated to an erase command queue 1610 to erase theblocks of the block grid. After the erase commands are confirmed 1611,the current block grid 1612 and its page stripes are moved to the listof available block grids 1412.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example of a block diagram for a solid-statedrive controller 1300 according to an embodiment of the invention. Itwill be understood that the various blocks or circuits of the SSDcontroller 1300 can be rearranged, combined, and/or further divided intosmaller blocks. In addition, the SSD controller 1300 can be integratedinto a single integrated circuit or can be embodied by multipleintegrated circuits. The illustrated SSD controller 1300 includes astorage communications interface 1302, a flash management processor1304, a random access memory (RAM) 1306, the journaling engine 1308, theECC encoder/decoder 1310, a flash stripe controller 1312, flash protocolcontrollers 1314, and flash memory devices 1316 a-1316 d. The SSDcontroller 1300 is outside of the flash memory devices 1316 and is notthe same as the controllers within the flash memory devices 1316 a-1316d. In one embodiment, there are at least 16 different flash memorydevices 1316 a-1316 d in the storage array.

The storage communications interface 1302 handles communication with ahost, such as with an input/output circuit of a server. The storagecommunications interface 1302 can conform to any of a variety ofprotocols, such as small computer system interface (SCSI), PCI-Express,serial ATA (SATA), external SATA (eSATA), universal serial bus (USB),IEEE-1394 (FireWire), or the like. In one embodiment, the SSD controllercommunicates with the host at a minimum of 50,000 allocation blocks persecond. The flash management processor 1304 can perform firmwarefunctions, translation layer functions, maintains the associationbetween pages and the gear used, initiates initialization bit error ratecommands, and the like. The RAM 1306, which can be either SRAM or DRAM,can be used to temporarily hold, that is, cache, data. Other componentsof the SSD can use the RAM 1306 as needed for scratchpad memory. Forexample, a page, page stripe, or page grid can be read into the RAM1306, and the interleaving/de-interleaving and error correction decodingoperations can performed on the data transferred to the RAM 1306. TheRAM 1306 is typically volatile memory and should accordingly be usedonly for temporary storage. The journaling engine 1308 performs thejournaling or flash translation layer activities. The ECCencoder/decoder 1310 performs encoding and decoding of information dataand ECC parity. The flash stripe controller 1312 provides services,takes a slice of data that has been encoded and distributes it among then lanes and returns an acknowledgement when done. In the illustratedembodiment, 4 lanes 1318 a-1318 d are shown.

When performing a read, the flash stripe controller 1312 retrieves thecorresponding data and reassembles a page of data. Typically, the databuses for the flash memory devices 1316 a-1316 d are arranged in lanes,such as lanes of 8 bits wide each. For example, these flash memorydevices can correspond to flash memory chips or to packaged flash memorydevices. Flash protocol controllers 1314 can provide registers for readand/or write caching, can provide address information, can providetiming signals, read and write signals, and the like. In the illustratedembodiment, a controller from the flash protocol controllers 1314 isinstantiated for each bus.

In one embodiment, the SSD controller 1300 is implemented in anintegrated circuit, such as by an application specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), which caninclude firmware or software instructions stored in a tangible,non-transitory computer-readable medium executed by a processor, or in ablock of hardware shared by several decoders. In particular, portionsthat are not expected to be used frequently, such as tertiary parityrecovery, may advantageously be implemented in firmware or software, orin a block of hardware shared by several decoders. In addition, itshould be noted that the disclosed techniques are applicable to use “inthe field,” such as in a server, and accordingly differ from techniquesused by an engineer during a design phase or during manufacturing andtest. Further, it should be noted that an integrated circuit for the SSDcontroller 1300 is separate from the flash memory devices 1316 a-1316 d.

Overview of a Decoding Process

The following is an overview of a decoding process according to oneembodiment of the invention.

Partial Page Read Response

-   -   1. Perform Primary Decode on received codewords        -   a. Decode and perform corrections    -   2. For each Primary codeword, check whether it can be        quick-released.        -   a. A codeword may be quick-released if:            -   i. The codeword is correctable, and            -   ii. The number of bits corrected for that codeword is                less than or equal to Qp for the current gear, and            -   iii. The codeword is not all-zeroes after correction.        -   b. If all codewords are quick-released:            -   i. Report a successful partial read response        -   c. If not all codewords are quick-released            -   i. Report that the read is being reissued            -   ii. Reissue a page stripe read.    -   3. Report Result

Page Stripe Read Response

-   -   1. Perform Primary and PoSP Decode on received codewords        -   a. Decode and perform corrections        -   b. Write into Secondary codeword storage        -   c. Do not Release until Fingerprint has been compared. In            practice, this currently means no release during the first            pass.    -   2. Check for Page Kill. (before, during, or after step 1 as        convenient)        -   a. Compare Fingerprint for each page against Expected            Fingerprints.        -   b. If any Fingerprint has more than Fingerprint_Tolerance            (default=5) errors, end with decode_status=failed.            -   i. If Tertiary is disabled, Fingerprint_Tolerance should                be set to maximum, effectively disabling this check.    -   3. Iterate        -   a. Secondary Decode        -   b. Primary and PoSP Decode            -   i. A codeword may be released if:                -   1. The secondary passed with zero corrections, and                -   2. The codeword is correctable, and                -   3. The number of bits corrected for that codeword is                    less than or equal to Qp for the current gear        -   c. If all secondary codewords decoded correctly with zero            errors, and all Primary codewords were released            -   i. End iteration with Decode_status=successful        -   d. (Optional, controlled by flash_initialization_mode bit)            If, after primary decode, at least two pages were either            all-ones or all-zeroes (including PoSP/PoTP), then end            iteration with Decode status=erased_page. Do not proceed to            Tertiary.        -   e. (Optional) If there were uncorrectables (not including            PoSP or PoTP), but no corrections in Primary or Secondary,            we are stuck.            -   i. End iteration with decode_status=failed        -   f. (Optional) If all primary (not including PoSP) codewords            correct with zero errors, and there are no Secondary            corrections, but up to one secondary uncorrectable is seen            -   i. End iteration with decode_status=successful        -   g. If max_iterations is reached,            -   i. If all Primary codewords (not including PoSP or PoTP)                passed, end with decode_Status=successful            -   ii. End iteration with decode_status=failed.    -   4. Report Result        -   a. If Decode=successful, return a success            -   i. Set next_gear if                -   1. The total # of bits corrected exceeds                    stripe_corr_thresh for the current page, or                -   2. stripe_iteration_thresh (default=3) or more                    iterations were required.        -   b. If Decode=erased_page then return Uncorrectable, ideally            with an erased_page flag set. Do not proceed to tertiary.        -   c. If Decode=failed, or Fingerprint Tolerance exceeded,            reissue page grid. Completion message=reissue.

Page Grid Read Response

-   -   1. Perform Page Stripe Decode on each Page, with the following        modifications:        -   a. Do not reissue (we already did)        -   b. For Last Page Stripe, PoTP should be performed on each            Primary pass.        -   c. Store the # of Fingerprint errors for each page (to find            the largest one later)    -   2. Perform Tertiary Iteration        -   a. Tertiary Decode (no erasures)        -   b. Secondary Decode        -   c. Primary/PoSP/PoTP Decode            -   i. A codeword may be released if:                -   1. The Tertiary had no uncorrectables, and                -   2. The release conditions for Page Stripe were                    satisfied.        -   d. If no uncorrectable codewords in Tertiary and all Primary            codewords (not including PoSP or PoTP) were released            -   i. Move to Report Phase with Decode=Success        -   e. Optional; added to match RTL): If the Secondary or            Primary in (b,c) made changes to the page stripe of interest            -   i. Secondary decode on stripe of interest            -   ii. Primary decode on stripe of interest            -   iii. If bit changes made and NOT max_iterations reached,                return to (i).        -   f. If all secondary codewords decoded successfully without            corrections, and all Primary codewords (ignoring PoTP)            decoded without corrections,            -   i. Move to Report Phase with Decode=Success        -   g. (Optional) If there were uncorrectables in T, S, or P            (not including PoSP or PoTP), but no corrections in T, S, or            P, we are stuck.            -   i. End iteration with decode_status=failed        -   h. If max_iterations is reached            -   i. If no uncorrectable codewords in Tertiary or Primary                codewords (not including PoSP or PoTP), end with                decode_status=Success            -   ii. End iteration with decode_status=failed.        -   i. Return to top of “Perform Tertiary Iteration”    -   3. Erase the killed Page        -   a. If the process has arrived at this point, then the            Tertiary iterations have failed. Zero or one erasures have            been done.        -   b. Select a page to erase            -   i. If at least one page has more than                Fingerprint_Tolerance errors in its fingerprint, then                the one with the most errors in the fingerprint should                be erased.            -   ii. If no page has more than Fingerprint Tolerance, or                in case of a tie, then the page with the highest number                of Primary Uncorrectables, based on the most recent                Primary decode of that page, should be erased                -   1. Primary Uncorrectables include Pri, PoTP, and                    (optionally, at the convenience of the RTL) PoSP.                -   2. For this purpose (only) primary uncorrectables                    includes primary codewords that were all-zero after                    correction.            -   iii. In case of a tie, the one with the lowest index can                be arbitrarily picked.            -   iv. Implementation note: The RTL can arbitrarily choose                the one that arrived back first.        -   c. If Erasures_done<2            -   i. Increment Erasures_done            -   ii. Erase the page with the most fingerprint errors            -   iii. Go back to top of “perform tertiary iteration”        -   d. Else end with status=failed.    -   4. Report Result        -   a. If Decode=successful, return a success and transfer            requested data.        -   b. If Decode=failed, report permanent failure, with a page            kill flag if appropriate, to FSC.        -   c. Set next_gear flag            -   i. If in this state, primary/secondary decoding has                failed, so the next_gear flag should be set on the                original page stripe.                Extensions and Variations

The choice of page stripes being four lanes wide is a balanced andconvenient choice. However, page stripes of other widths for example, asnarrow as one page or as wide as 16 pages, are also applicable.Arranging the flash pages on four parallel lanes provides good latencyfor partial reads, and efficient sharing of the flash interface.However, the principles and advantages described herein are stillapplicable if the page stripe is distributed over many dice on the samelane, on a random selection of four lanes within a large multi-laneaccess system, or any combination thereof.

Reading a minimum amount from the flash memory necessary to decode theuser-requested part of the page stripe, and doing a follow-up read ofthe entire stripe when required is one approach. Another approach thatalso works is to transfer the entire page stripe during the initialread, starting with that initial minimal set, but continuing on to readthe remainder rest of the page stripe, and wrapping around to thebeginning of the stripe, and continuing on until the entire stripe isavailable. In parallel, the initial ECC decode operation is performed.If the quick-release ECC is successful, the transfer of the remainingbytes of the stripe can be aborted. If the quick-release is notsuccessful, then the decoder waits until the rest of the stripe isavailable, and completes the decode operation.

The principles and advantages disclosed herein are applicable to flashdrives that emulate hard disk drives. Various forms of flash drivesinclude, but are not limited to: solid-state drives (whether SCSI, SATA,or PCI attached), solid-state caching or tiering devices, enterpriseflash drives, hybrid drives (hybrids of hard disk drives and flashdrives), flash memory cards, flash memory sticks, thumb drives, backupdrives, or the like. For example, various aspects can be incorporatedinto a solid-state drive controller chip. Alternatively, various aspectscan be incorporated with the host, such as, by being incorporated intothe same motherboard with other components of the host. A flashtranslation layer permits a flash drive to emulate a hard disk drive bytransferring data to and from the host in allocation blocks. The hostcan use any of many different file systems, such as, but not limited to:New Technology File System (NTFS), File Allocation Table (FAT), FAT32,High Performance File System (HPFS), Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, Hierarchical FileSystem (HFS), HFS Plus (HFS+), or the like. The host or host computercan be, for example, but not limited to, an enterprise server, a webserver, a mobile base station, a host bus adapter, an IP router, a homeserver, a file server, a workstation, a data logger, a digital videorecorder, a smart TV, a media center, a jukebox, a smart phone, a mobilephone, a personal digital assistant, a personal computer, a laptopcomputer, a tablet computer, a video gaming console, an interactivekiosk, a digital camera, a digital video camera, a digital music player,an ebook reader, or the like.

Various embodiments have been described above. Although described withreference to these specific embodiments, the descriptions are intendedto be illustrative and are not intended to be limiting. Variousmodifications and applications may occur to those skilled in the art.

APPENDIX A Incorporation by Reference of Commonly Owned Applications

The following patent applications, commonly owned and filed on the sameday as the present application, are hereby incorporated herein in theirentirety by reference thereto:

Title Application No. SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR 13/477,600 ADAPTIVELYSELECTING ERROR CORRECTION CODING SCHEMES IN A FLASH DRIVE SYSTEMS ANDMETHODS FOR 13/477,633 INITIALIZING REGIONS OF A FLASH DRIVE HAVINGDIVERSE ERROR CORRECTION CODING (ECC) SCHEMES SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR13/477,598 REDUNDANTLY STORING ERROR CORRECTION CODES IN A FLASH DRIVESYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR LOW 13/477,595 LATENCY, HIGH RELIABILITY ERRORCORRECTION IN A FLASH DRIVE SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR 13/477,568TRANSPARENTLY VARYING ERROR CORRECTION CODE STRENGTH IN A FLASH DRIVESYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR 13/477,599 TRANSPARENTLY VARYING ERRORCORRECTION CODE STRENGTH IN A FLASH DRIVE SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR13/477,845 RECLAIMING FLASH BLOCKS OF A FLASH DRIVE SYSTEMS AND METHODSFOR 13/477,635 REDUNDANTLY STORING DATA IN A FLASH DRIVE SUCH THAT AFAILED PAGE CAN BE TOLERATED SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR 13/477,601RECOVERING DATA FROM FAILED PORTIONS OF A FLASH DRIVE

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of managing one or more gears, whereindifferent gears correspond to different error correction code (ECC)schemes, the method comprising: receiving a request for user data storedin flash memory devices, wherein the user data can be in stored in ascrambled from or in an unscrambled form; retrieving one or morecodewords containing the requested user data from a region of the flashmemory devices, wherein the region is associated with a first gear;correcting the one or more codewords to detect and correct errors withthe first gear; deciding whether or not to select a different gear forthe region or retiring the region based on at least one of an analysisof an approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) of the region or a number ofdecoding iterations used to correct the requested user data, wherein thedifferent gear has greater error correction capacity than the firstgear; and after erasure of blocks associated with the region: when it isdecided not to select the different gear, associating the region with afirst list of available regions, wherein the first list is associatedwith the first gear; and when it is decided to select the differentgear, associating the region with a different list of available regions,wherein the different list is associated with the different gear;wherein at least correcting and deciding are performed by an integratedcircuit.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the region is distributedamong a plurality of distinct memory devices, wherein each codeword isdistributed among the corresponding memory devices of the region.
 3. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising setting an indication to changethe gear associated with the region if it is decided to select thedifferent gear, and leaving the indication unchanged if it is decidednot to select the different gear.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein thedifferent gear is selected from a plurality of gears, the plurality ofgears varying in data payload size and in corrective capability, whereinthe different gear has the next largest amount of data payload sizeamong the plurality of gears.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein thereare 3 gears in the plurality of gears.
 6. The method of claim 1, whereinthe different gear comprises a decrease in a code rate as compared tothe first gear.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein a different set of oneor more ECC parameters comprises a change in a type of ECC code ascompared to a first set.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the regioncorresponds to a page stripe or to a page grid.
 9. The method of claim1, wherein deciding whether or not to select a different gear for theregion or retiring the region is based on the RBER of the region. 10.The method of claim 1, wherein deciding whether or not to select adifferent gear for the region or retiring the region is based on thenumber of decoding iterations used to correct the requested user data.11. A method of managing one or more gears, wherein different gearscorrespond to different error correction code (ECC) schemes, the methodcomprising: receiving a request for user data stored in flash memorydevices, wherein the user data can be in stored in a scrambled from orin an unscrambled form; retrieving one or more codewords containing therequested user data from a region of the flash memory devices, whereinthe region is associated with a first gear; correcting the one or morecodewords to detect and correct errors with the first gear; and decidingwhether or not to select a different gear for the region or retiring theregion based on at least one of an analysis of an approximate raw biterror rate (RBER) of the region or a number of decoding iterations usedto correct the requested user data, wherein the different gear hasgreater error correction capacity than the first gear; wherein theanalysis of the approximate RBER further comprises comparing theapproximate RBER against one or more threshold limits, wherein at leastone of the approximate RBER or the one or more threshold limits ismodified by a safety factor, wherein the safety factor accounts foruncertainty in estimating future RBER; wherein at least correcting anddeciding are performed by an integrated circuit.
 12. The method of claim11, further comprising determining at least an approximate raw bit errorrate (RBER) based on a number of corrected bits encountered duringdecoding of the one or more codewords.
 13. The method of claim 11,wherein error correction according to a gear is performed in aniterative fashion using multiple error correction codes having multipledimensions, further comprising estimating the approximate RBER bysumming a number of bits flipped during the iterative correction.
 14. Anapparatus comprising: a first circuit configured to: receive a requestfor user data stored in flash memory devices, wherein the user data canbe in stored in a scrambled from or in an unscrambled form; and retrieveone or more codewords containing the requested user data from a regionof the flash memory devices, wherein the region is associated with afirst gear, wherein different gears correspond to different errorcorrection code (ECC) schemes; and a second circuit configured tocorrect the one or more codewords to detect and correct errors with thefirst gear; wherein the first circuit is configured to decide whether ornot to select a different gear for the region or retire the region basedon at least one of an analysis of an approximate raw bit error rate(RBER) of the region or a number of decoding iterations used to correctthe requested user data, wherein the different gear has greater errorcorrection capacity than the first gear, wherein, after erasure ofblocks associated with the region, the first circuit is configured to:associate the region with a first list of available regions when it isdecided not to select the different gear, wherein the first list isassociated with the first gear; and associate the region with adifferent list of available regions when it is decided to select thedifferent gear, wherein the different list is associated with thedifferent gear.
 15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the region isdistributed among a plurality of distinct memory devices, wherein eachcodeword is distributed among the corresponding memory devices of theregion.
 16. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the first circuit isfurther configured to set an indication to change the gear associatedwith the region if it is decided to select the different gear, and toleave the indication unchanged if it is decided not to select thedifferent gear.
 17. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the differentgear is selected from a plurality of gears, the plurality of gearsvarying in data payload size and in corrective capability, wherein thedifferent gear has the next largest amount of data payload size amongthe plurality of gears.
 18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein there are3 gears in the plurality of gears.
 19. The apparatus of claim 14,wherein the different gear comprises a decrease in a code rate ascompared to the first gear.
 20. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein adifferent set of one or more ECC parameters comprises a change in a typeof ECC code as compared to a first set.
 21. The apparatus of claim 14,wherein the region corresponds to a page stripe or to a page grid. 22.The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the first circuit is configured todecide whether or not to select a different gear for the region orretire the region based on the analysis of the RBER of the region. 23.The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the first circuit is configured todecide whether or not to select a different gear for the region orretire the region based on the number of decoding iterations used tocorrect the requested user data.
 24. An apparatus comprising: a firstcircuit configured to: receive a request for user data stored in flashmemory devices, wherein the user data can be in stored in a scrambledfrom or in an unscrambled form; and retrieve one or more codewordscontaining the requested user data from a region of the flash memorydevices, wherein the region is associated with a first gear, whereindifferent gears correspond to different error correction code (ECC)schemes; and a second circuit configured to correct the one or morecodewords to detect and correct errors with the first gear; wherein thefirst circuit is configured to decide whether or not to select adifferent gear for the region or retire the region based on at least oneof an analysis of an approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) of the regionor a number of decoding iterations used to correct the requested userdata, wherein the different gear has greater error correction capacitythan the first gear, wherein for analysis of the approximate RBER, thefirst circuit is further configured to compare the approximate RBERagainst one or more threshold limits, wherein at least one of theapproximate RBER or the one or more threshold limits is modified by asafety factor, wherein the safety factor accounts for uncertainty inestimating future RBER.
 25. The apparatus of claim 24, wherein the firstcircuit or the second circuit is further configured to estimate at leastan approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) based on a number of correctedbits encountered during decoding of the one or more codewords.
 26. Theapparatus of claim 24, wherein the second circuit is configured toperform error correction in an iterative fashion with multiple errorcorrection codes having multiple dimensions, wherein the first circuitis further configured to estimate the approximate RBER by summing anumber of bits flipped during the iterative correction.
 27. An apparatusof managing one or more gears, wherein different gears correspond todifferent error correction code (ECC) schemes, the apparatus comprising:a means for receiving a request for user data stored in flash memorydevices, wherein the user data can be in stored in a scrambled from orin an unscrambled form; a means for retrieving one or more codewordscontaining the requested user data from a region of the flash memorydevices, wherein the region is associated with a first gear; a means forcorrecting the one or more codewords to detect and correct errors withthe first gear; and a means for deciding whether or not to select adifferent gear for the region or retiring the region based on at leastone of an analysis of an approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) of theregion or a number of decoding iterations used to correct the requesteduser data, wherein the different gear has greater error correctioncapacity than the first gear, wherein, after erasure of blocksassociated with the region, the deciding means is further configured to:associate the region with a first list of available regions when it isdecided not to select the different gear, wherein the first list isassociated with the first gear; and associate the region with adifferent list of available regions when it is decided to select thedifferent gear, wherein the different list is associated with thedifferent gear.
 28. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the region isdistributed among a plurality of distinct memory devices, wherein eachcodeword is distributed among the corresponding memory devices of theregion.
 29. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the deciding means isfurther configured to set an indication to change the gear associatedwith the region if it is decided to select the different gear, andleaving the indication unchanged if it is decided not to select thedifferent gear.
 30. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the differentgear is selected from a plurality of gears, the plurality of gearsvarying in data payload size and in corrective capability, wherein thedifferent gear has the next largest amount of data payload size amongthe plurality of gears.
 31. The apparatus of claim 30, wherein there are3 gears in the plurality of gears.
 32. The apparatus of claim 27,wherein the different gear comprises a decrease in a code rate ascompared to the first gear.
 33. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein adifferent set of one or more ECC parameters comprises a change in a typeof ECC code as compared to a first set.
 34. The apparatus of claim 27,wherein the region corresponds to a page stripe or to a page grid. 35.The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the deciding means is configured todecide whether or not to select a different gear for the region orretiring the region based on the RBER of the region.
 36. The apparatusof claim 27, wherein the deciding means is configured to decide whetheror not to select a different gear for the region or retiring the regionbased on the number of decoding iterations used to correct the requesteduser data.
 37. An apparatus of managing one or more gears, whereindifferent gears correspond to different error correction code (ECC)schemes, the apparatus comprising: a means for receiving a request foruser data stored in flash memory devices, wherein the user data can bein stored in a scrambled from or in an unscrambled form; a means forretrieving one or more codewords containing the requested user data froma region of the flash memory devices, wherein the region is associatedwith a first gear; a means for correcting the one or more codewords todetect and correct errors with the first gear; and a means for decidingwhether or not to select a different gear for the region or retiring theregion based on at least one of an analysis of an approximate raw biterror rate RBER of the re ion or a number of decoding iterations used tocorrect the re-quested user data, wherein the different gear has greatererror correction capacity than the first gear, wherein for analysis ofthe approximate RBER, the deciding means is further configured tocompare the approximate RBER against one or more threshold limits,wherein at least one of the approximate RBER or the one or morethreshold limits is modified by a safety factor, wherein the safetyfactor accounts for uncertainty in estimating future RBER.
 38. Theapparatus of claim 37, further comprising means for determining at leastan approximate raw bit error rate (RBER) based on a number of correctedbits encountered during decoding of the one or more codewords.
 39. Theapparatus of claim 37, wherein the correcting means is configured toperform error correction in an iterative fashion using multiple errorcorrection codes having multiple dimensions, wherein the deciding meansis further configured to estimate the approximate RBER by summing anumber of bits flipped during the iterative correction.